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.

NAME
The sloth got its name from its slow movement. It is not lazy, just slow-moving.

DIET
Sloths are plant-eaters who are more active at night; they eat leaves (including leaves from the cecropia tree), tender young shoots, and fruit; they are herbivores (plant-eaters). It used to be thought that sloths ate mostly cecropia leaves because they were often spotted in cecropia trees. It turns out that they also live in many other trees, but aren't spotted there as easily as in cecropia trees.

Sloths have a low metabolic rate and a low body temperature (91°F). This keeps their food and water needs to a minimum. Sloths have small molars which they use to chew up their leafy food. Their stomach has many separate compartments that are used to digest the tough cellulose (a component of plant material that they eat).

SLEEP
Sloths sleep during the day. They sleep about 15 to 18 hours each day, hanging upside down.

PREDATORS
Sloths are hunted by jaguars, harpy eagles, and people. A sloth's main forms of protection are its camouflage (greatly increased by the coating of algae growing on its fur) and its very slow movement; these adaptations make it virtually disappear in the rain forest canopy.

HABITAT AND RANGE
Sloths spend almost all of their lives in trees; they are arboreal. These mostly-quiet mammals live in the tropical rain forests of South and Central America.

LOCOMOTION
The sloth is the slowest mammal on Earth. Sloths are quadrupeds (four-legged animals) who "walk" upside-down along tree branches. They only rarely venture to the ground and walk on the ground in an upright position. Sloths can swim well.

LIFE SPAN
Sloths may live 10-20 years in the wild.

REPRODUCTION
Adult females produce a singe baby each year. They give birth upside down hanging from a tree branch.

    A baby 3-Toed sloth that was a pet at a local Urarina house. These mammals grow to about the size of a large monkey. Many times you will see pet monkeys, sloths and other animals in local villages due to the Indians killing their parents for food. The pets may also be eaten once they reach maturity.

CLASSIFICATION
Sloths belong to the:

• Kingdom Animalia (the animals)
• Phylum Chordata
• Subphylum Vertebrata (animals with backbones)
• Class Mammalia (warm-blooded animals with fur and mammary glands)
• Order Xenarthra
• Suborder Pilosa
  • Family Bradypodidae
    • Genus Bradypus - Three-toed Sloths
      • Species torquatus (the maned sloth)
      • Species tridactylus (the Three-toed Sloth has three toes (and claws) on the front and hind legs
      • Species variegatus
  • Family Megalonychidae
    • Genus Choloepus - Two-toed Sloths
      • Species hoffmanni (Hoffman's Sloth, a two-toed sloth: it has two toes (and claws) on the front legs; the hind legs have three toes (and claws)
      • Species didactylus (Linne's Two-Toed Sloth)

         

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      Giant Sloth

      

      The giant ground sloth was one of the enormous creatures that thrived during the ice ages. Looking a little bit like an oversized hamster it probably fed on leaves found on the lower branches of trees or bushes. The largest of these ground sloths was Megatherium which grew to the size of a modern elephant. Like other giant creatures that disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene period (about 10,000 years ago), Megatherium, and its smaller sloth cousin, Mylodon, are extinct. Only the small tree sloth survives today. Or so scientists believe.

      In the 1890's an Argentinean explorer, geographer and adventurer, Ramon Lista, was hunting in a portion of his country known as Patagonia when a large, unknown creature covered with long hair, trotted past the party. To Lista the creature looked like a gigantic armadillo. The party shot at the beast, but the bullets seemed to have no effect.

      Professor Florentino Ameghino, a paleontologist in Argentina, heard the Lista story and began to wonder if the strange beast was a giant sloth that had survived from the Pleistocene. He might not have put much stock in the Lista story if it had not been for legends he'd collected from Indians in the Patagonia region about hunting such a large creature in ancient times. The animal in the Indian stories was nocturnal, and slept during the day in burrows it dug with it's claws. The Indians found it difficult to get their arrows to penetrate the animal's skin.

      Ameghino also had a piece of physical evidence. A small section of apparently fresh hide found by a rancher named Eberhardt on his property in a cave in 1895. The hide was studded with small, hard, calcium nodules and would have been impervious to the teeth of Pleistoncene predators. It seemed likely that it would have also resisted Indian arrows and Lista's bullets.

      So sure was Ameghino this was the creature Lista had seen he named the creature after Lista: Nemoylodon listai, or "Lista's new Mylodon."

      Expeditions to Eberhardt's and other caves, recovered additional pieces of hide along with evidence the Eberhardt's cave had been home to both men and Mylodon. With the development of the Carbon-14 dating method in the twentieth century the age of Mylodon remains in the Eberhardt's cave was settled. Dung found in the cave was more than 10,000 years old. The skin was estimated to be 5,000 years old. Conditions in the caves may have preserved it making it look fresh to the eye and fooling Ameghino.

      No additional evidence has turned up that the giant sloth survives today.