Sloths are known for 2 things; Laziness, and being cute. There’s significantly more to a sloth and its life than just that however, and they posses some surprising skills and adaptations.
Sloths, by nature, are in fact quite lazy, sleeping up to and potentially more than 15 hours per day. They have an extremely low metabolic rate and usually only travel 41 yards(roughly 123 feet) per day. This allows them to survive off of an insignificant amount of food compared to their body weight. Another adaptation that allows them to survive off of very little is their lower than average body temp, usually staying between 86 and 93 Fahrenheit.
Sloths, having no incisors, have a pallet of leaves twigs and buds that they “chew” by slapping their lips together essentially. They take days to digest this food, which admittedly is a very sloth thing of them to do. They only have to come down from the canopy once a week to relieve themselves.
For protection, sloths have a surprising weapon. All sloths have three 4 inch claws on their back feet, however the number on their front limbs depends. There are 6 species of sloth but two major types of sloths, aptly named two toed sloths and 3 toed sloths. One has 2 claws and the other having 3. Uncommonly known, sloths are in fact comparatively very strong swimmers. I say comparatively because their swim speed is roughly 13 meters per hour, this being 3 times faster than their on land speed but still slow compared to literally any other creature of similar size. Luckily sloths have almost no predators that can easily take advantage of this due to the heavy canopy protecting them from Eagles and Jaguars
Sloths reproduce with a gestation period of 6 months, and generally only have one offspring per year. The baby will cling to the mothers belly as she travels through the trees, watching and learning as well as developing. After 6 months of this it adopts part of its mothers territorial range, and keeps communication with its parents through specific calls. Unfortunately, sloths are severely threatened by habitat loss and suffer greatly because of this.
There are many Donation and support organizations for these animals, and i highly encourage doing your own research on these animals and the organizations, and helping them. Thank you for reading, and if you found this interesting you should consider reading my other articles.