Did You Know! Sloths is the Nature's Slowest Moving Animal in the World

Sloths is the Slowest Moving Animal in the World

Sloths are the slowest animals in the world. They also happen to be the cutest animals. Sloths are so slow that their name itself means sluggishness or laziness. The top speed of a sloth is 0.003 miles per hour. 

Sloths are a group of arboreal Neotropical xenarthran mammals, constituting the suborder Folivora. Noted for their slowness of movement, they spend most of their lives hanging upside down in the trees of the tropical rainforests of South America and Central America. 

There are two types of sloth, two-toed and three-toed. However, this can get confusing as both types have three claws, or ‘toes’, on their hind limbs. In reality, the ‘two-toed’ sloth should really be called the ‘two-fingered’ sloth as the difference between them both can be found on their front limbs. 

The sloth’s nature allows it to conserve energy, moving slower than any other mammal on the planet. This modest pace means that sloths generally travel no more than 125 feet (38 meters) in a single day, and on the rare occasion that they find themselves at ground level, they crawl only 1 foot (30 cm) per minute. 

The Greek goddess Aergia was the ancient personification of sloth and was known to sleep often. The sleeping pattern of a modern-day sloth is dependent on its habitat, with sloths in captivity sleeping up to 15-20 hours a day whilst sloths in the wild sleep as much as humans, at around 8-9 hours a day. 

A sloth’s diet consists mainly of buds, leaves, and tender shoots, although some sloths have been known to eat insects and birds to supplement their diet. They have a multi-compartment stomach that allows them to effectively digest the tough cellulose that they eat. This proves to be a slow process, taking 30 days to digest one leaf!