In some cases they die from a fall indirectly because the mothers prove unwilling to leave the safety of the trees to retrieve the young. They are very sturdily built and rarely die from a fall. Infant sloths normally cling to their mothers fur, but occasionally fall off. They give birth upside down hanging from a tree branch. Adult females produce a single baby each year, however, sometimes the lack of movement actually keeps females from finding males for longer than one year. Sloths may live 10 – 20 years in the wild.

They come to the ground to urinate and defecate only about once a week. Sloths are particularly partial to nesting in the crowns of palm trees where they can camouflage as coconuts. They mostly move at 15 – 30 centimetres (0.5 – 1 feet) per minute. On the ground their maximum speed is 1.5 metres (5 feet) per minute. Sloths sometimes remain hanging from branches after death. They can move at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator (4.5 metres (15 feet) per minute), but they burn large amounts of energy doing so. They have about half as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight. Sloths move only when necessary and even then very slowly. They sleep about 15 to 18 hours each day, hanging upside down. Sloths are nocturnal, they are most active at night and sleep all day.

Sloths hold onto tree branches with strong, curved claws that are on each of their four feet. They eat, sleep, mate and give birth upside-down in the trees. 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. For the most part, it is widely accepted that they eat a purely herbivorous diet. 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 are widely believed to be herbivores, but some accounts refer to them as omnivores. 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.

Sloth animal