Surprisingly Chill Facts About Sloths

Surprisingly Chill Facts About Sloths Facts about sloths

Sloths move so slowly that algae grows on them.Unlike the kind of algae you’ll find growing in your swimming pool if you...
06/05/2023

Sloths move so slowly that algae grows on them.

Unlike the kind of algae you’ll find growing in your swimming pool if you leave it too long in-between cleans, this algae is actually useful.

This special kind of green algae only grows on sloth fur, creating a rather interesting symbiotic relationship.

The sloths leave the algae be, and allow it to thrive, and the algae in return provides some much-needed camouflage for this rather defenseless animal.

Modern day sloths are a shell of their former selves.Sloths today are quite small creatures compared to their ancestors....
06/05/2023

Modern day sloths are a shell of their former selves.

Sloths today are quite small creatures compared to their ancestors.

All of the sloth species alive today grow no longer than 31 inches (80 cm), and weigh up to 17 pounds (7.7 kg).

Giant sloths, the modern day sloth’s ancestors, were a completely different story though.

These ancient sloths lived on the ground, instead of trees, and some of them were up to 20 ft (6 m) long and weighed close to 5 tons!

They disappeared off the face of the earth around 11,000 years ago, most likely due to hunting.

Two-toed sloths have three toes, not two.Wait what? You heard that right – thanks to a mis-translation from their names ...
06/05/2023

Two-toed sloths have three toes, not two.

Wait what? You heard that right – thanks to a mis-translation from their names in Spanish, sloth’s names have become a little confusing.

In reality, two-toed sloths have only two claws on their front legs (like fingers) and three on their back legs (like toes).

Three-toed sloths have three at the front, and three at the back.

The confusion here is because in Spanish the word for toes and fingers is the same (dedos), so calling them two-toed/fingered sloths would make a little more sense. In Spanish, that is!

Sloths in the wild are much more active than we thought.Like most animals, sloths were easier to study in captivity than...
03/05/2023

Sloths in the wild are much more active than we thought.

Like most animals, sloths were easier to study in captivity than in the wild.

This ended up giving us false ideas on the nature of wild sloths though.

Sloths in captivity were found to sleep up to 15-16 hours per day, and so we made the assumption that this applied to sloths in the wild as well.

A study published in 2008 actually corrected this by a large measure – it turns out that wild sloths only sleep around 9-10 hours per day, just a few more than us!

Sloths spend as little time possible moving, and even less on the ground.Sloths don’t really have it easy when it comes ...
03/05/2023

Sloths spend as little time possible moving, and even less on the ground.

Sloths don’t really have it easy when it comes to predators.

They pretty much have an inability to move at anything other than a snail’s pace, and no defense mechanisms to speak of.

They’re so vulnerable, in fact, that they spend most of their time at a standstill in the hopes they simply won’t be noticed.

The only time they really leave the trees, for example, is to go to the bathroom – and that’s only once a week!

Sloth is more than just a name for these tree-dwellers.Sloths make moving slowly an art form, so much to the point that ...
27/04/2023

Sloth is more than just a name for these tree-dwellers.

Sloths make moving slowly an art form, so much to the point that their tendency to laze around was the inspiration for their name.

They have an incredibly slow metabolism, taking up to 30 days just to digest a single leaf!

They move at an average speed of around 13 ft per minute (4 m), increasing that to only 15 ft (4.5 m) when they’re in danger.

Talk about slow movers!

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