Sloths are divided into two genera, Bradypus, which means “slow footed” and Choloepus, meaning “lame footed”. But at the end of the Pleistocene increasing temperature and humidity caused a shrinkage of these open environments from where these giants obtained their food. Without adequate habitat, their population slowly but steadily collapsed.

Sloths are folivores, feeding on tree leaves which takes a long time to digest and delivers little energy per unit weight. So they get few calories from their food. In other words, they require a small amount of energy to perform their everyday activities. So evolutionary speaking this predisposition to require small amounts of energy, characteristic of Xenarthrans, has been maximized even further in sloths given their energy-poor diet. Among leaves, they prefer the young, tenderer ones more than mature leaves. But the literature on sloth diet in the wild comes mostly from three-toed sloths, which can be active during the day and therefore can be observed by researchers.Two-toed sloths have a longer gestation period of around 10 months, while in three-toed sloths gestation lasts for about six months. Why are sloths so slow? Happy or not, a sloth face is always the same. This, however, does not mean that they are not able to demonstrate distress, which they do in a variety of ways. Two-toed sloths are strictly nocturnal but three-toed sloths can be nocturnal, diurnal or even cathemeral (active both day and night).

Talk about what pet each of you would like if you could have any animal in the world and why – as exotic as you like.They are endotherms like all mammals but rather poor ones. When temperature drops too much sloths don't shiver to warm themselves, which is one more mechanism to save energy. You could both try being very, very still like a sloth. Which of you will move first?! Can your child close one eye like the sloth in the cover illustration? Try dragging your body along the ground like a sleepy sloth. Go to the park and use the climbing frame to hang upside down and move like a sloth. Make your movements very slow, gripping on really tightly to the climbing bars. Play hide and seek So, they probably go around combining visual and olfactory cues from the environment. What sound do sloths make? But among them, two have received more attention and support: environmental modification due to climate change and hunting by humans.

Apart from that sloths, like all Xenarthrans, the group where sloths belong together with anteaters and armadillos, have a low metabolism. If that however fails they try to defend themselves by violent swings of their arms and claws (both two and three-toed sloths) and by trying to bite the opponent (mainly two-toed sloths; three-toed sloths only occasionally do try to bite). The pygmy three-toed sloth is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List because it inhabits solely a tiny island of less than 5 km2 (Escudo de Veraguas) off the coast of Panama and the forest it inhabits is being disturbed by human activities. While this might sound interesting and perhaps plausible, how these algae-based nutrients get inside the sloths so as to be useful to them is not known. Sloths are not blind but their eyesight is poor. Studies indicate that the sloth eyes show adaptations to night vision, likely reflecting the fact that they can be active at night and some individuals or species being exclusively so. Smell is the most accurate of the senses of a sloth.

Where do sloths live?

Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the demise of these giants, including disease and even an impact of an extra-terrestrial asteroid similar to the one that wiped out the Dinosaurs 60 million years ago. By being numerous, sloths represent an important link of the food web of Neotropical forests, being preyed upon by large raptors such as the harpy eagle, large cats like jaguars, pumas and sometimes even by smaller predators such as the ocelot and the tayra.