Sloths are Indeed the Slowest Mammals

Sloths were declared the slowest mammals on the planet.

October 20^th is the official International Sloths Day, so experts had the opportunity to educate many people about this interesting and unusual mammal.

More importantly, scientists found out that this animal has the slowest metabolism on the planet. The study was seven-year long and involved a team of researchers from the Wisconsin-Madison University.

During the research, the team collected data from two-toed and three-toed sloths to monitor their metabolism. According to Jonathan Pauli, an ecologist and co-author, he and his colleague expected these animals to have a significantly low metabolic rate, but they were surprised when they discovered this animal needs just a little amount of energy.

Then, researchers have compared the sloths with other leaf-consuming mammals and have come to the conclusion that the three-toed sloth is so slow it can grow moss on its back. Also, they found out that this species had the slowest metabolism, expanding just 162 kilojoules/ day/ kilogram of energy.

On the other, the two-toed sloth was a bit more active with 234 kilojoules. Surprisingly, the panda represents the toughest opponent for the three-toed sloth because it has a daily consumption of 185 kilojoules.

These mammals can survive with this slow metabolism because they live in small areas and take long naps. In addition, this unusual mammal can regulate its body temperature which prevents it from losing extra energy during their sleep.

According to the statistics from the World Wildlife Federation, there are many amazing facts about sloths as these animals spend between 15 and 20 hours a day sleeping. Also, besides their low metabolic rates, they move just around 40 yards per day.

Although sloths live in the forests of South and Central America, they are also excellent swimmers thanks to their long arms. Sloths are also very dirty animals because many insects live in their fur.

Scientists were puzzled when they first analyzed a sloth’s fur because they didn’t expect it to host so many parasites. There are six species of sloths, and the most critically endangered are the pygmy and the maned sloth.

Unfortunately, not even this mammal managed to escape from the human abuse. It is worth mentioning that some sloths don’t die because poachers kill them, but because they lose their habitat due to massive deforestation.

Image Source: CDN

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.