Robert Carroll, age 12, of Rochester, New York, for his question:
What is a sloth?
The sloth is named for his lazy way of life. In fact, he is so slow and lazy that plants grow in his fur coat. This fact does not bother him at all. It is even useful to him. For the plants, which are green algae, give a greenish tinge to his coat and make him harder to spot in the tropical foliage,
This lazy fellow's home is in the dense damp jungles of Central and South America. He is a native of the New World. In size, he is two feet long or more. He wears a coat of dense, dark fur and if you ever got a chance to see him, he is sure to be upside down. For the sloth spends his time hanging by his four feet from a high branch,
In this topsy‑turvy position he eats, crawls along, and sleeps4 Sleeping occupies about 18 hours of this lazy fellow's day. The sloth does not feel comfortable on the ground. where he can just barely crawl along. But, strange to say, he is quite at home in the water. He has been known to swim quite swiftly over a lake a mile wide„ For swimming, he uses his strong forelegs in a kind of crawl stroke.
Experts say that the sloth is the slowest of all the mammal animals in the world. So it is lucky for him that he is not a meat eater. If he were he would never be fast enough to catch a dinner. He is a vegetarian and, slow as he is, the leaves have no way to escape him. He crawls along the branches, hand over hand, until he finds a bough of young leaves and tender shoots. Then he munches away and, chances are, goes right back to sleep.
The sloth family is divided into two groups. One group is the two‑toed sloths. The toes are the long clumping hooks by which the animal hangs from the tree branches. The two‑toed sloth, as you have already guessed, has two of these toes on each foot. The other branch of the family is the three‑toed sloths. These fellows, naturally, have three toes on each foot.
A two‑toed sloth is a little more agile than his cousin, but not much. He can stand on the ground and even walk a few steps, though this mode of travel does not appeal to him. Compared with his three‑toed cousin, he is quite a gadabout. But he still rates as the second laziest manorial in the world.
The baby sloth is always an only child. As we would expect, he takes life easy from the beginning. For the first few weeks of life he lies flat on Mama's tummy, which must be for him rather like being in a hammock. Then he begins to nibble leaves and soon goes off to live a solitary, lazy life of his own. For the sloths are too lazy even to keep a family together.