Page 157 - Atlas Of The World's Strangest Animals

THREE-TOED SLOTH 157

curl into a ball, and rely on a special system of blood
Three-toed sloth habitats
vessels to focus warmth around their vital organs, where
it’s most needed.

Topsy-turvy
Sloths can be found from Panama to northern Argentina,
where they make their homes in the region’s tropical
rainforests.While many animals are well adapted to an
arboreal lifestyle, sloths are such specialists that their bodies
have become truly extraordinary.
Clambering about in the tree tops is tiring and so, to
save energy, sloths eat, mate, give birth and nurse their
young dangling, upside down, from a convenient branch.
In fact, they have difficulty supporting their weight in an
upright position, and must spend much of their time
simply hanging around.They are able to do this thanks to
a flexible spine, long limbs and a set of remarkably strong,
curved claws.These claws make such efficient grappling
hooks that dead sloths are difficult to dislodge from their
branches! The result of such a topsy-turvy lifestyle has
been that the position of many of the sloths’ internal
organs is different from those of other mammals. Even rainstorms to avoid drawing attention to themselves.
their hair grows downwards, from their stomach towards Their long, gray-brown hair blends in so well with the
their back, so that rain water flows off when they’re surrounding environment that when they curl into a ball
upside down. to sleep they can easily be mistaken for a termite nest or
Despite their infamous lack of speed, life in the tree a knot of vegetation. During the rainy season, this fur
tops is surprisingly safe for a sloth, thanks to their natural even takes on a coat of blue-green algae (species
caution and camouflage.They rarely leave the safety of Trichophilius and Cyanoderma), which provides additional
the foliage and have even been known to urinate during cryptic camouflage.

Comparisons

Although they look similar and occupy roughly the same geographic rainforests.Thanks to a much wider diet (which includes small
range, it’s believed that two- and three-toed sloths (species Choloepus) vertebrates), the two-toed sloth are generally larger and faster than
aren’t closely related.Two-toed sloths are probably descended from the three-toed variety.
the giant, extinct ground sloths that once dominated South America’s

Two-toed sloth Three-toed sloth

(c) 2011 Marshall Cavendish. All Rights Reserved.