Sloths

 

Next time you are at the zoo, make sure you go visit the sloths. Sloths are the slowest mammals on Earth. They live in the tropical rain forests of South America. They spend all their time in the trees. They only come down to go to the bathroom or to find a different tree.

There are two kinds of sloths, the two-toed sloth, and the three-toed sloth. I like the three-toed sloth the best. If you remember the sloth from the movie Zootopia, the one in the DMV, he was a three-toed sloth. Sloths are herbivores.  They like to eat leaves, stems, fruits and even the bark of trees and other plants. Their stomach is always full and sometimes the food takes a month to digest. I guess they do everything slow. Sloths are good swimmers so if they fall out of a tree and into a river, they can still get back to shore.

Sloths spend a lot of time sleeping or just hanging around in the trees. In fact they are so slow that they have a whole ecosystem living in their fur. There is a kind of moth that live there and nowhere else.  They have special bacteria and fungus that can act like antibiotics! I guess they don’t take baths very often. Here are some fun facts from (https://slothconservation.org/10-incredible-facts-about-the-sloth/).

1. There used to be sloths the size of elephants!

2. Sloths are three times stronger than us!

3. They poop once a week, and a third of their body weight in one go

4. Sloths are blind in bright daylight

5. They are 3x faster in water than on land

6. It takes sloths 30 days to digest a leaf

7. If it gets to cold, they can starve to death on a full stomach

8. Sloths can fall 100 feet without injury

9. They could cure cancer and help with bacterial resistance

10. Sloth lifespan: No one knows how long they live for  (one in a zoo lived for over 50 years!)

11. Sloths have a colony of hundreds of bugs living in their fur!

Here’s a short video about sloths.

I hope you liked our sloth talk!

Love Papaw.