Sloths are the laziest animals on Earth, sleeping fifteen to twenty hours a day and barely moving the rest of the time. The name says it all, sloth, one of the seven deadly sins, the patron animal of doing nothing. They are basically furry couch cushions.
Sloths are not lazy; they are running an extremely efficient energy budget. They eat leaves, which are about the lowest-calorie food going, so everything about them is built to spend as little energy as possible: a slow metabolism, low body temperature, and famously slow digestion that can take weeks. Slow movement is a survival strategy, not a character flaw, and it doubles as camouflage from predators like eagles and big cats that hunt by spotting motion. As for the sleeping, older captive studies suggested fifteen to twenty hours, but when researchers measured wild sloths with brain monitors, they slept under ten hours a day, about the same as a tired human. So the sloth is not idle, it is economical, the animal kingdom's answer to making a single tank of fuel last. Calling it lazy is like calling a hybrid car lazy for sipping petrol.
Reception
- Smithsonian's National Zoo: Sloth factsPRIMARY
- Wikipedia: SlothREFERENCE