Sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside-down from tree branches. Sloths spend almost all of their lives in trees. They have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a creature of their size) and maintain low body temperatures when active (30 to 34 degrees Celsius or 86 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit) and still lower temperatures when resting. Even so, leaves provide little energy and they deal with this by a range of economy measures. Their stomach has many separate compartments that are used to digest the tough cellulose (a component of plant material that they eat).Īs much as two-thirds of a well fed sloths body weight consists of the contents of its stomach and the digestive process can take as long as a month or more to complete. They have small molars which they use to chew up their leafy food. This keeps their food and water needs to a minimum. Sloths have a low metabolic rate and a low body temperature (91° Fahrenheit). It turns out that they also live in many other trees, but are not spotted there as easily as in cecropia trees. It used to be thought that they ate mostly cecropia leaves because they were often spotted in cecropia trees. They may eat insects, small lizards and carrion, however, their diet consists mostly of buds, tender shoots and leaves (including leaves from the cecropia tree). Sloths have very large, specialized, slow-acting stomachs with multiple compartments in which symbiotic (the living together of two dissimilar organisms) bacteria break down the tough leaves. They have made extraordinary adaptations to an arboreal browsing lifestyle. They only rarely venture to the ground and walk on the ground in an upright position. Sloths are quadrupeds (four-legged animals) who ‘walk’ upside-down along tree branches. In most mammals, hairs grow towards the extremities, but because these animals spend so much time with their legs above their bodies, their hairs grow away from the extremities in order to provide protection from the elements while the sloth hangs upside down. The outer hairs grow in a direction opposite from that of other mammals. Sloth fur exhibits specialized functions. Some sloths have colonies of green algae encrusting their fur, both adding to the camouflage effect and providing some nutrients to the sloths, who lick the algae during grooming. Only during their rare visits to ground level do they become vulnerable. In the trees sloths have good camouflage and moving only slowly, do not attract attention. Despite their apparent defencelessness, predators do not pose special problems. A cornered sloth may swipe at its attackers in an effort to scare them away or wound them. Sloths claws serve as their only natural defence. Sloths have a short, flat head, big eyes, a short snout, a short or non-existent tail, long legs, tiny ears and sturdy, curved claws are on each foot. Sloths have a thick brown and slightly-greenish fur coat and are about the size of a cat around 2 feet (61 centimetres) long. Hoffmann’s Two-toed Sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni).Linnaeus’s Two-toed Sloth (Choloepus didactylus).Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus).Pale-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus tridactylus).Maned Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus torquatus).
Pygmy Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus).Most scientists call these two families the ‘Folivora’ suborder, while some call it ‘Phyllophaga’. Sloths belong to the families ‘Megalonychidae’ and ‘Bradypodidae’, part of the order ‘Pilosa’. In total, there are six species of sloth. The sloth is the slowest mammal on Earth. The sloth got its name from its slow movement, it is not lazy, just slow-moving. Sloths are medium-sized mammals that live in the Central and South American rainforests.
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