Type of species: Sloth family Appearence: A sloth has long sharp claws and is a very slow moving animal. There are bugs that live in its fur and they graze on the green algae that grows on its back. They have poor eyesight and can climb can swim. Adaptations: Sloths have to learn how to defend themselves against enemies and predators. You may have already participated in our successful campaigns to end sloth yoga, sloth sleepover events and sloth swimming lessons – well now it gets worse. ‘ Sips with sloths ‘ and ‘ after school slime with sloths ‘.

Sloths are mammals found in South and Central America. They hang to the tree branches with their long claws. They survive on leaves. Their long claws make it difficult for them to walk on the ground. Hence, they spend a lot of time on trees.

There are two kinds of sloths; Two-toed and three-toed. They share most of the features but vary in size.

Table of Contents

• 11 Sloths Characteristics

Swimming Cycling Running Hiking Volleyball Hockey Hobbies Camping Fishing Hunting. Happy Garden Sloths Crocband Clog HC98 $29.95 $39.95. Sloths—the adorable and lethargic animals living in treetops—depend on the health and survival of Central and South American tropical forests. They spend much of their lives in the canopy, snoozing and remaining hidden from predators. The animals live solitary lives and travel from tree to tree.

Sloths Facts and Information

• Sloths are the slowest animals in the world.
• Algae grow on the fur of sloths. The green color of algae make sloths hide from predators in the trees.
• Sloths can climb only six to eight feet per minute.
• Sloths are wonderful swimmers. Sloths drop themselves into the water from the branches.
• Sloths do not shiver when it is cold as their body has only 25% muscle.
• The claws of sloths offer them protection against predators.
• The Scientific Name of the Sloths is Choloepus Hoffmanni

Sloths Diet

Sloths eat leaves which are hard to digest. The leaves are digested slowly in their four-part digestive system. A sloth takes a month to digest a meal of food. Their diet is not nutritious and they do not derive much energy from it.

Sloths are considered folivores as they rely on tender shoots, leaves and buds. Two-toed sloths have been found to eat small reptiles, birds and insects as per few documentations.

Sloths Habitat

Sloths are most commonly found in the rain forests of south and central America. They curl into a ball while sleeping. They also hang from the tree branches. Sloths are not known for activities.

They spend most of their time eating and sleeping. These leave trees only to swim. Sloths that have been kept captive sleep for fifteen to twenty hours per day. This leaves them with little time to indulge in social activities. Sloths prefer leading solo lives.

Sloths Appearance

Sloths have flat, short head, short snout, big eyes, long legs, tiny ears and curved claws. There are two species of sloths. These have either two or three claws. These have sad-looking eyes, stubby tails and roundish heads. Two toed sloths are bigger than the three toed ones. Three toed sloths seem as if they are smiling because of their facial coloring. Sloths can turn their head around because of the two extra vertebrae in the neck.

Behavior

Sloths spend a lot of time hanging from the branches of trees. They sleep, mate and eat in the trees. Their curved, strong claws help them in hanging from the branches of trees. Male sloths are shy, solitary animals. Female sloths indulge in little bit of socializing. They sleep entire day and are active during the night time. Sloths do not move until it is necessary. They defecate and urinate once a week and for this they come to the ground.

Sloth Swimming Video

Sloths Lifespan

The life expectancy of a sloth varies based on the species. Most of the sloths live for 20 to 30 years. In captivity, there can survive for a longer time. The lifespan of a median sloth is 15 years.

Predators

Humans, the harpy eagle and jaguar are the main predators of sloths. Poachers and electrical lines were responsible for death of sloths in Costa Rica. A sloth can protect itself from camouflage and because of the slow movement. These features let them disappear in the canopy of the rainforest.

Sloths Breeding

Sloth mate and give birth to young ones in trees. Courting begins when a female sloth screams to inform the males in the area that she is ready for mating. Males put up a fight by hanging from the tree branches. They paw at other sloths to be the winner. Sloths just have one offspring at a time.

The gestation period is five to six months. The babies cling to their mothers for several weeks after their birth. They stay with their mothers for up to four years. The mating season is usually during the spring season. In South America, sloths mate during July-November. In Central America, the sloths mate during February-May.

Sloths Lifestyle

Sloths live in dense forests. They spend a lot of time in trees. They climb down once in a week to the base of the tree. They bury the feces in the vicinity of the trees they reside in. Their feces act as a wonderful fertilizer for the trees they reside in. This is because their stool breaks down quite easily.

Images, Pics, Photos and Pictures of Sloths :

Sloths Grooming

Sloths do not groom themselves. They have a dense coat of fur which grows algae. They have a greenish tinge during the rainy season because of the growth of algae. Sloths belly houses several micro bacteria for breaking down the food that they eat and thereby promote digestion.

The digestion process of a sloth is quite slow. It takes about a month for a slot to digest a meal. The metabolism of a sloth is very low. This is why the nutrients extracted from the sloths is slow and the low energy level probably the reason why they are sluggish.

Sloths Characteristics

• Sloths have greenish and thick brown coat of fur.
• They hand from trees with their claws.
• The only defense means for a sloth is its claw.
• A sloth that has been cornered tries to swipe the attackers to scare or wound them.
• Sloths move slowly and hence do not attract attention.
• They are vulnerable only during their visits to the ground that happens once in a week.
• Colonies of algae grow on sloths. This acts as a camouflage and source of nutrients when sloths try to lick their fur.
• In sloths, the hair grows in the opposite direction from other mammals. This is because they spend a lot of time with their legs above their bodies hanging from the tree branches. protection is offered to the sloths with their hair growing from extremities.
• Sloths are four legged animals
• Sloths land on the ground in upright position or else they spend most of the time up-side down hanging from tree branches
• Sloths are home to several creatures such as moths and beetles.
• Sloths are excellent swimmers.
• Sloths have multiple compartment stomachs.

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You might have all seen a sloth or at least a picture of one hanging lazily on a tree branch munching on the leaves and barks. Sloths are the slowest among the mammals on this planet and are known for their laziness.

When you think of a sloth, the peculiar characteristics that conjure up in your head might be their sharp claws, fur, black nose & extremely slow movement. But where is the tail? Ever wondered whether sloths have a tail or not? Scratching your head huh? Don’t worry in this article we will have a look into sloths and find out whether sloths have tails or not.

So, do sloths have tails? Yes, sloths do have tails but don’t be mistaken, they aren’t anything like what you imagine. When we say a tail, don’t think of it as a long coiled one or the wagging tail of a dog. The tail of a sloth is so tiny that it resembles a snout. It is so small that most of the people who do not know much about sloths miss the tiny tail hiding in all that fur if at all they see one.

That being said, the size of the tail differs between the different species of sloths. For instance, the three-toed sloths have a longer tail than the two-toed one. By longer tail we mean 2 to 3cm more!

In order to have a clear understanding, we’ll have a sneak peek into the evolution of sloths, the uses of their tail, and many other facts about them. Let us get going!

Contents

Do all sloths have tails?

Yeah, all sloths have a tail but they are not easy to spot. The tail of a sloth is more like a snout. For instance, the three-toed sloth (the one with the longest tail) has a tail that is only 3 to 5cm long. Though it does not look anything like a tail, technically it is!

Now you might be wondering what purpose do these tiny tails serve, right? In the coming sections, we will find answers to this question. But before we proceed further, let us first have a sneak peek into the basics!

Why do animals need a tail?

Before we begin discussing the tail of sloths, it is important that you have a basic idea of why do animals need a tail. For the sake of simplicity, let us keep our discussion confined to animals that live on trees (arboreal animals).

For those animals that live in the trees, the tails are prehensile. This means these tails have been evolved over the years and has become capable of grasping or holding objects. If you have seen a monkey leaping from branches to branches, you might have noticed how they use their tail for a better grip. Apart from being of help in climbing, these prehensile tails also help the arboreal creatures in foraging for fruits.

Now that we have a basic idea on the uses of a tail, let’s see how a sloth uses its tail.

Why do sloths need tails?

Sloths are arboreal animals that climb down hardly once a week and they spend 90% of their lifetime on trees. From whatever we have discussed it might be quite evident that the tail of sloth isn’t prehensile. Apart from this, their tails are hardly 5cm long and cannot help them in any way while climbing or foraging. Then what do they use it for?

As mentioned earlier, among the 2 different types of sloth the one with the largest tail (up to 5cm) is the three-toed sloth. This means that only the three-toed sloth uses their tail.

These three-toed sloths use their stubby tail to dig a shallow hole near the tree they live in, to poop! Yeah, quite bizarre huh? Even more bizarre is the fact that these sloths poop only once in a week! Being the slowest and laziest mammal on earth, sloths have an extremely slow digestive system and it takes them a long time to digest the food they eat.

Apart from being the slowest it also has an inefficient digestive system. Which means that they need to eat a lot to meet their energy requirements. It is interesting to note that almost 1/3rd of the bodyweight of a sloth is its poop in its belly. That’s quite a lot of poop right?

Planet Earth Sloth Swimming

Sloths are virtually defenseless against attack from the predators which is why they spend an entire life camouflaged on trees. And the last thing they want is, the smell of their poop signaling the predators.

They use their stubby tail to dig a shallow hole to poop and cover this hole with leaves and sand!

A Sloth Swimming

Did the ancestors of sloths have a tail?

Sloths have been a matter of fascination for the biologists and they have learned a great deal about them from the fossils of their ancestors. These paleontologists found out that the ancestors of the present-day sloths were very different from the ones we see today. It is important to note that most of these ancestors where ground sloths and not tree sloths.

The fossils obtained & the mummified remains of sloths obtained from Chile & Argentina suggest that these ancestors had a strong pelvic bone, stronger hind limbs & vertebrae. These characteristics point out to the fact that at least some of the early sloths could walk bipedally. Most of these sloths had hand & claws that look suitable to manipulate foliage which strongly supports the argument that the early sloths were bipedal.

An important thing to note here is that it appears from many of the fossils that sloths had a robust tail. It is interesting to note that this robust tail was much longer than the tail of the present-day tree sloths and it touched the ground. This suggests that they may have used this tail to sit in a tripodal posture by balancing its body weight on its tail and then stand on its feet to reach out to trees with their hands.

There is another group of researchers who claims that the ground sloths were good swimmers like the tree sloths and their long tail helped them in swimming.

The evolution of ground sloths – From having a long tail to tree sloths with a small tail!

There is a group of paleontologists who believe that the evolution of a sloth has got a role to play in the smaller tail of a tree sloth. They attribute this change to the evolution of ground sloths to tree sloths.

As mentioned earlier, ground sloths which were the early ancestors of the present-day tree sloths lived in the ground and had a robust tail, strong hind limbs. The fossils of the ground sloths also indicate that most of these animals were plantigrade (animals that place the entire foot surface on the ground). Over the years they evolved from being plantigrade animals to animals having pedolateral foot.

Gradually when these ground sloths evolved to being tree sloths, they had sharp claws to help them seamlessly climb a tree. And the tail became virtually of no use and at it is believed that at some point in time they evolved to having small tails as we see today.