Meet the Animal Park's Sloth

NATIVE RANGE

Two-toed sloths are found in northern South America, in moist tropical forests.

DIET

In the wild, they eat mainly tree leaves, shoots, berries, and fruit. Their gut is adapted to break down the plant material, and they have a unique digestive system that can take up to a month to process a single meal. Chewing grinds down their teeth, which grow continuously.

BEHAVIOR

Sloths are mostly solitary arboreal (tree-dwelling) mammals that live most of their lives hanging upside-down from tree branches. They are largely nocturnal, and considering the low nutritional value of their leafy diet, often sleep around 15 hours each day. Their famously slow movements are also an adaptation to their low-energy diet.

FASCINATING FACTS

• Sloths have a very unusual relationship with algae, with their fur serving as a home for algae especially during the rainy season. Each hair has a groove running along the length of the shaft that traps moisture and fosters the growth of algae. This makes the sloth appear green, helping camouflage it in the forest canopy.
• Sloths are heterothermic, which means their body temperature fluctuates with their immediate environment vs. being well-regulated internally. They will move to branches either in or out of the sun to warm or cool themselves.
• Linnaeus’s two-toed sloths are one of six sloth species; only two of these species are considered two-toed. Yet the “two-toed” description is somewhat misleading, as all sloths have three toes on their hind limbs.