Why is the sloth so slow?

The sloth gets its name because it is slow in movement and often hangs its claws upside down on branches for hours. It has a keen sense of smell, is not very developed in vision and hearing, and feeds on leaves and fruits. It has been highly specialized into arboreal life, and lost the ability to move on the ground. The whole body hair color is gray and brown because the body hair is attached to algae plants and shows green. Let's take a look at why the sloth is so slow.

Why is the sloth so slow?

The sloth moves slowly to conserve energy. In fact, the sloth moves more slowly than any other mammal on earth and is famous for traveling no more than 38 meters a day, but its lazy nature allows it to make the most of the resources around it. Because sloths are herbivores, they have little energy to travel fast. Sloths feed on many tree species, including fruits, buds, branches and leaves, but none of these foods provide much nutrition and can only survive in a poor diet through adaptive methods such as slow movement.

How slowly does the sloth move?

The sloth is the only wild animal with plants on its body. although it has feet, it cannot walk and relies on its forelegs to drag the body forward, so it takes a month to move a distance of 2 kilometers. An animal who is still too lazy to do anything, even too lazy to eat, too lazy to play, can endure hunger for more than a month, moves lazily and slowly when he has to move, and even crawls slowly when he is chased and caught, and the speed of escape is no more than 0.2 meters per second.

Why didn't the sloth become extinct?

First, the sloth has done a good job in protecting the color, which is already very close to the background color, coupled with being good at using green algae to grow on the body, from afar, it is difficult to be found. And the fur is hard, so it's okay to resist ordinary predators. Claws don't attack, but it's hard for any animal to eat it because it's so tightly glued to the trunk. In addition, sloth meat is not delicious, which is a survival benefit brought by evolution. Generally, animals with distinctive colors and lack of means of defense will taste bad, and predators will not spend their own energy to eat bad prey.