Sloth Research Paper

The ecology of sloths

When people hear “sloth” they usually think of a lazy mammal that does barely anything and isn’t that interesting, but they are wrong. Sloths are very interesting, they have many interactions with lots of different organisms. Sloths are arboreal{tree dwelling} mammals that live in the rainforest canopies of central and south America. A sloth’s diet consists of plants, when they are ready to defecate they go to the forest floor dig a hole and go, this sends the nutrients back into the ecosystem and makes an area for sloth moths to lay their eggs.. Sloth are very interesting mammals that are a big part of the arboreal mammals in some areas of central and south American rainforests.

Like all animals sloths are affected

They can be found in the southern part of central America, in south America they can be found in Brazil, Costa rica, Panama, and many other places. There are two categories of sloths,two toed sloths and three toed sloths.Sloths use their long claws to climb,hang, defence, and could use them for swimming. Since the sloth has long arms and claws it crawls very slowly when on the ground. Sloths are very good swimmers, they can swim three times faster than they crawl, they will even drop from a tree into water. Sloths usually only go the forest floor to defecate, this makes them very vulnerable but when in the trees their color, slow movement and the algae on them acts as camouflages. A sloth’s fur is specialized to grow in the away from the sloth’ body to protect it from the weather when the the sloth is upside down and some of the sloth’s fur have tiny cracks that can collect water .Sloths are folivores, they mainly eat leaves and plant material , some two toed sloth sometimes will eat insects and other small animals. Since sloths mainly eat leaves, it does not give them enough nutrients they need so they have specialized chambered stomachs to slowly digest their food. Sloths also have very low metabolic rates and they have low body temperatures. Researchers have found out that sloths in the wild actually sleep about 10 hours a day and don’t sleep for fifteen or more hours like captive