“They have this intimate relationship with the trees,” says Mazzoni. This is another reason why lightning-fast reactions – and the enormous amount of energy needed to fuel them – just aren’t needed. The sloths’ tree-based life cycle means they spend very little time at risk from predators like the jaguar. Because of this they have to have a very slow metabolic rate to cope with this low calorific intake.”Īnd part of that comes down to where it is they live.
“The leaf diet is very poor in nutrients and the intake of calories is very low. “What changed was a combination of both going up into the trees, and having a diet almost entirely based on leaves,” says Camila Mazzoni of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany.
Giant sloths, some that would weigh up to several tonnes, walked on the ground during the last ice age until around 11,000 years ago, foraging from the trees by standing up on their hind legs to reach into the foliage. Modern-day sloths – the three-toed sloth and the two-toed sloth – are much smaller versions of the sloths that inhabited the prehistoric world. Just why sloths move so slowly is due to some peculiar evolutionary tricks. And the life they lead is very much in slow motion. For the most part, they live high in the branches of the forests which stretch across Central and South America, only coming down to the ground to defecate.
Sloths, as their name betrays, have little need to rush.
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