Top Ten Coolest Facts About Sloths
Sloths are beloved animals. Everyone references them along with snails and tortoises when talking about slow things. They’re adorable, but most people don’t know just how unique these animals are. They were actually almost their own class of animal because of how unique they are. So I’ll give you a bunch of weird but true facts that I doubt you’ve heard before about sloths, in no particular order. Enjoy!
These adorable little cuddly-wuddlys actually have pretty much a thousand bugs in their fur. Mind blown. Actually, sloths are a little ecosystem for algae and beetles, and many other species would be extinct without them.
The ancient elephant-sized sloth ancestors, called megatheriums, were pretty much the only animals back then that had digestive systems strong and good enough to swallow avocados whole, and when they pooped them out more avocados grew. Those avocados wouldn't exist without them, but it's still weird that when we eat avocados we are technically eating the descendant of a sloth's butt.
This is a cool fact. By the way, that baby sloth looks so adorable. I like sloths.
From the moment they are born, they can lift their entire body weight upwards with just one arm. They have 30% less muscle mass than similar-sized mammals and are still stronger than a human. Wow!
I don't believe it. It is impossible. Look at the picture. How is that three times stronger than us?
They can. Sadly, many sloths still don't survive this happening, and I'll tell you why. It's a weeper. Sometimes, baby sloths fall out of trees that are well over 100 feet high. Immediately, like any mother, the mama sloths darts as fast as she can down the tree to rescue her baby. Unfortunately, that's extremely slow. They suck at going fast. They go down around one foot per minute, so it'll take the mama sloth almost an entire 24 hours to get down to help her baby.
Sloths are safe from predators in the trees, but on the ground, not so much. Usually the poor mama sloth, after a few hours of climbing at her top speed (which means she's around a 8th of the way down) will spot her poor baby sloth get attacked, eaten, or killed by predators like wild dogs. Great. Now I'm crying.
Kind of sad, actually. Their slow digestive system is a big part of why their movement is so slow, too.
I was wondering why they are so slow.
Isn't it crazy that sloths can have 1.4-something neck vertebrae for every one a giraffe has? In other words, sloths have many more bones in their neck than a giraffe.
This is kind of complicated, but you know how they have the whole ecosystem in their fur? Some of the algae in there is very effective against bacteria, cancer, and parasites, and if we ever have the chance to study it more, it could help us get a cure. This is a very big if, but there's a chance!
Then why not call them three-toed sloths?
To put it into scale for you, most humans can only stick their tongues out 1 or 2 inches, so sloths' tongues can go pretty far out!