What Animal Travels Only Two or Three Feet a Minute & Is One of the Slowest Creatures on Earth?

Identification

• A sloth is a furry, tree-dwelling mammal that is native to the rain forests of Central America and South America. The adult sloth is about the size of a medium-sized dog or a bear cub and is covered with long, matted gray-brown fur. Sloths have characteristically flat faces; short snouts; long claws; and large, reddish-brown eyes. Sloths are divided into two taxonomic families: Megalonychidae, which are two-toed sloths, and Bradypodidae, which are three-toed sloths.

Sloth Movement

• Two-toed sloths are larger and slower than three-toed sloths, but both animals are quite slow. Sloths spend most of their lives in trees, which they use as homes and as sources of food. A sloth will often choose one tree in which it lives for the remainder of its life, so they have little reason to move. Sloths come down from the trees only to excrete waste and obtain water. On the ground, sloths only move a few feet per minute; however, sloths are much faster swimmers and much faster when climbing trees, which their bodies are more well-adapted to doing.

Reason for Slowness

• Several factors contribute to the sloth's slow pace. First of all, it has a very slow body metabolism for an animal its size. Metabolism describes all of the body processes that keep an animal alive. Secondly, the sloth has very little muscle tissue and so it cannot move quickly. Thirdly, the animal primarily eats leaves, which do not provide much energy for fast movement. Lastly, the sloth can only use its forelimbs and claws to drag itself when it is on the ground; its hind limbs simply are not capable of moving the animal.

Other Sloth Behaviors

• Sloths don't just move slowly; almost everything a sloth does is slow because of its low metabolic rate. For example, a sloth may take a month to digest leaf matter it consumes and it may only excrete waste only two or three times a month. It takes both males and female sloths up to three years to obtain sexual maturity. The gestation period for a female sloth is between six months and one year.