The Sloth: Characteristics
However, one of the first creatures to make an existence high up in the tropical forest canopy of South America was the sloth, a distant relative of the ant-eaters and a member of the order Edentata, and it adopted a solution almost exactly opposite to those of the monkeys. There are two main kinds of sloth, the two-toed (belonging to the genus Bradypus) and the three-toed (genus Choloepus). Of these, the three-toed sloths are considerably more slothful. It hangs upside down from a branch suspended by hook-like claws at the ends of its long bony arms. It feeds on only one kind of leaf, Cecropia, which happily for the sloth grows in quantity and is easily found. No predators attack the sloth - few indeed can even reach it - and nothing competes with it for Cecropia leaves. Without fear of predation and plentiful food sources without competition from other predators allows them to spend up to eighteen hours each day asleep. A green algae grows on its coarse hair and communities of a parasiticmoth live in the depths of this coat producing caterpillars which graze on the alga-covered hair. Its muscles are such that it is quite incapable of moving at any speed whatsoever. It is virtually dumb and hearing poor. Even its sense of smell, though better than ours, is less acute than that of most mammals.