Sloth by Iamrandygirl
Sloths seem to be all the rage lately. It’s not surprising as such since they’re such cool creatures to begin with and kind of cute on top of that. Obviously they get their names from being very slow moving which is the most noticeable trait they have. And they don’t just move slowly, their metabolism is also so low that they only need to poop once a week. They come down from their trees to do that and then bury the feces apparently to make sure the predators don’t find them. Even though they live high up and spend almost all of their time hanging from the branches they rarely die from falling, even in the case of babies. Although the young sometimes do die due to the consequences of a fall as the mothers will not always get down to the ground to retrieve them.
Possibly because sloths are so slow, they play host to at least one form of algae which helps them blend in to the leaf canopy they spend most of their time in. Thus their fur provides the setting for a whole ecosystem on its own, mostly formed out of non-parasitic insects. The funny thing is though that even though they live so high up and are not marine mammals as such they are great swimmers and far faster in the water than on the ground or even up in the trees.
And just because sloths are such excellent swimmers, a video of a sloth swimming:
Sloth at Matapalo by Catandrea
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