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Why Are Sloths So Slow?
- ajb 2y agoSee also the delightful Sloth song of Flanders and Swann: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM
- roughly 2y agoToday I Learned from a link on that page that sloths camouflage themselves by growing algae on their fur and moving very slowly: https://slothconservation.org/with-a-little-help-from-my-friends-sloths-moths-and-algae/ https://slothconservation.org/with-a-little-help-from-my-fri...
- nsguy 2y agoIIRC they also come down from their tree to poop once per week.
- TheRoque 2y agoAnd the poop can be up to 3/4 of their total weight
- dtgriscom 2y agoWait a minute.... that article says that the contents of their stomachs can be up to a third of their weight. Add 3/4 of their weight is poop, and that's more than 100% of each sloth being either digesting leaves or digested leaves.
- at_a_remove 2y agoI think that it probably goes like: 0/0, 30/0, 0/25, 30/25, 0/50, 30/50, 0/75, so that one in emptying into the other fast enough to avoid overslothing, assuming 5% goes to making the sloth fatter. This allows for a minimum "neither tummy nor turd" 20% sloth floor value. If that were increased, we would instead see a series with smaller and smaller non-zero values for fullness as we approach maximum sloth fecalness.
- xattt 2y agoFecality factor?
- at_a_remove 2y agoSloth stool ceiling.
- labster 2y agoThe mathematics works the same way as programming projects: when the task is 90% done you get to finish the remaining 90% of the work.
- TheRoque 2y agoI made a mistake. It's 1/3, but I think it's included in the "stomach's weight". Sorry
- dumpHero2 2y agoWhy do they come down to poop?
- istjohn 2y agoThey're not going to risk having it land on some poor unsuspecting sloth below them! That would be barbaric.
- kulahan 2y agoFor a less-fun fact: tons and tons of bugs live in their fur. Sometimes literally thousands of moths, beetles, etc. are living in their fur. Some bug species are only found on sloths.
- klondike_klive 2y agoIt occurred to me for the first time the other day that the word "sloth" is to "slow" what "warmth" is to "warm".
- mc32 2y agoAnd some people do pronounce the word “slow-th” though it’s atypical.
- vrc 2y agoMany would bristle at you referring to Sir David Attenborough as atypical!
- Loughla 2y agoI was joking around with a student from England who is attending the college I'm consulting with right now. He is trying to figure out a future career. He wants to do something with media. I was throwing out really stupid ideas to get him to laugh. Then I Said, "why not replace Attenborough?" The joking immediately stopped and he stared at me deadpan and said "not funny. No one could do that." It was amazing.
- Nursie 2y agoYeah, we Brits are very proud of him, a real one of a kind national treasure. But we're also now painfully aware that Sir David is quite, quite old. Born in 1926 apparently. And there really isn't an obvious candidate to fill the gap once he does go. After having had that voice on well-produced nature content for my entire life, I find most other nature-documentary voice-overs quite jarring. Even the British ones (Tom Hiddlestone had a go recently IIRC). I will say though that I enjoyed Paul Rudd doing ‘Secrets of the Octopus’. Didn't overplay it, just did a really good job IMHO.
- luxuryballs 2y agouh oh I can see where this is going given the current technology trends… I wonder if his family can patent the voice or get royalties from a reproduction
- hoiu24234334 2y ago[flagged]
- prashp 2y agoThis is a question about survival, not productivity.
- somekyle2 2y agowho is saying this on the behalf of western society?
- davidmurdoch 2y agoThat's what we call "grind culture". People like that do exist though, but it's not a majority by any stretch. Maybe it was a few generations ago though.
- elevatedastalt 2y agoYou literally created a new account to post this unsubstantive and obviously strawmannish comment. I am not a mod and have no authority on this forum but we'd honestly be better off without you.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yndoendo 2y ago"The Unexpected Truth about Animals" by Lucy Cooke talks about this and goes into more detail. Enjoyed the other animals too. It has a good example of how humans will still ignore reality in the animal kingdom when it comes to religious beliefs. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34211802-the-unexpected-truth-about-animals https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34211802-the-unexpected-...
- agumonkey 2y agoThere should be social activities that revolves around spending a lot of time in nature close to animals.
- soneca 2y ago> ”Research has shown that all sloths have a rare genetic condition called ‘rod monochromacy’” Weird phrasing. All of them having something that is rare means it is not rare at all, right? And if all of them have it, it is not a “condition”, it is their genes, how they are.
- Retric 2y agoIt’s rare among mammals in general even if it’s universal for sloths. Most people think of evolution as a string of improvements, however you can get negative traits in a population from a large enough genetic bottleneck or spread by being next to a very useful mutation. So it’s not necessarily an advantage for them, it could have just been bad luck. Alternatively, there could have been some selective pressure for it as a means of improving night vision or something, we just don’t know.
- whyslothslow 2y agoWait. So why are sloths so slow? I read this whole article and it’s still not clear to me _why_ they’re slow. I’m genuinely curious! It seems like this article just lists a bunch of facts about sloths. But doesn’t say why being nearly blind or having a slow metabolism gives any evolutionary advantages.
- Terr_ 2y agoThe article has three headings which I'd paraphrase as: 1. With their poor eyesight, if they were fast they'd half-blindly get into trouble and fall to their deaths or whatever, so it's kinda-sorta beneficial given that other constraint. 2. Being slow-by-design reduces calorie needs, meaning they can survive eating a smaller amount of stuff and stuff that other animals also don't want as much. This lets them fit into a low-competition niche. 3. Most nearby predators are looking for fast-moving targets, so being slow helps them avoid being detected.
- ggm 2y agoThis has chicken/egg qualities. Sloths may have poor eyesight because the energy burden and genetic expression behind better eyesight doesn't pay in their niche, but that could imply it's the downgrade option after they slow down, not the input condition which led to slow lifestyle. Similar to why some small things become giants and some giant things become smalls, it all depends on the niche, and the input conditions before transformation through time and genes.
- bradley13 2y agoThe article doesn't mention it, but I wonder if there isn't a fourth: 4. Having little muscle mass, and with more than a third of their body weight being half-digested leaves, there's not much worth eating. Surely a sloth is not the primary prey of any predator. More of a desperation move?
- ricksunny 2y ago(not sure why 'surely')
- smallerfish 2y agoWe had a tree topple in our backyard last year during a rainstorm. Several days later I was working with a crew, cutting it up; one of the gardeners working on the top branches of the tree waved at me and beckoned me over, and when I got there pointed out a sloth, still tightly gripping a limb of the fallen tree. We cut the branch that it was on, and then carried branch and sloth over to the nearest large tree. The sloth relatively rapidly transferred to the trunk of the tree, and then relatively rapidly ascended into the canopy, where we lost sight of it.
- Rinzler89 2y ago>sloth, still tightly gripping a limb of the fallen tree Wow. Didn't it get hurt from the tree falling down on it? >rapidly ascended Doesn't sound very slothy.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y agoSave energy except when you definitely need it.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoThey can move very fast. However… their diet is so calorie low that they can actually really harm themselves by exerting too much energy, basically can’t replace it quickly enough. They are so evolutionary evolved to move slow, I saw one scared and struggling against a vet that it was still moving in a slow motion defense. Side note, that vet only had 4.5 fingers on one hand. A sloth bit half of one off years ago in a slow motion amputation. Very sharp teeth (they move slow) and very powerful jaws.
- Etherlord87 2y ago"relatively"
- Antony90807 2y ago[dead]
- teruakohatu 2y agoSloths almost seem like creatures that evolved on another (slow) world. I wonder if they perceive time differently to us and if their brains are underclocked.
- antisthenes 2y agoMaybe they figured out the secret to a Zen life?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bbarn 2y agoAnother fun fact about sloths. My wife is curator of a zoo and they have had some in the past. That slow digestion the article mentions? They probably have some of the worst smelling feces of any animal in the wild.
- nixass 2y ago[flagged]
- bell-cot 2y agoMight that be another part of their predator-discouraging strategies?
- greentxt 2y agoI doubt they can control the smell.
- bell-cot 2y agoPuffer fish can't control being poisonous, but it still discourages predators.
- lagniappe 2y agoPoor example, they're not naturally poisonous, it's dietary. Palytoxin and Ciguatoxin are not endogenous, the animal first has to eat another organism containing a dinoflagellate that creates these toxins, Gambierdiscus toxicus. This quality is inherent to most reef fish, especially ones with beaks.
- hurtuvac78 2y agoI have seen videos of small turtles going really fast on tiny skateboards. All of a sudden, they become a fast animal and seem happy with it. A bit like human with a bike or a car. Feels like evolution is not as perfect as we want to believe sometimes. Could something similar happen with sloths? Maybe their eyesight would improve quickly?
- mzl 2y agoWho has ever said that evolution is perfect?
- rramadass 2y agoInteresting article. Given their low metabolism, lack of muscles, low amount of food intake i was wondering where their strength comes from. Thankfully the article links to another fascinating one which explains it - https://slothconservation.org/think-stronger-sloth/#:~:text=The%20muscles%20that%20sloths%20use,that%20produce%20a%20pushing%20motion.&text=When%20the%20fibres%20are%20more,grip%20strength%20seen%20in%20sloths https://slothconservation.org/think-stronger-sloth/#:~:text=....
- asimpletune 2y agoI think this is the first time I've seen someone use text fragments in the wild.
- anentropic 2y agoin Chrome just right-click and "copy link to highlight" it's handy for sites that don't put anchors on all their headings etc... or like this to link to random place in body text
- marginalia_nu 2y agoMost animals leave a lot of brute strength off the table by how they are designed, because there's more important concerns such as speed and explosivity. Strength is a tertiary concern. The human biceps is a good example of this. From a mechanical standpoint, where its insertion is like barely below the elbow joint, the bicep has extremely poor leverage, to the point where it needs to exert much more force than the hand does probably by a factor ~20-50. If it somehow went diagonally between the shoulder and the wrist, maximizing leverage, ignoring everything unpractical about this you'd be able to curl a small car engine. The downside is that a diagonal bicep would give us about 40 degrees of range of motion for the elbow and we'd be completely unable to throw things. Big exception is jaw muscles (which are set up closer to that bicep thought experiment). Since they don't need to "escape" from anything and can sacrifice a bit of range of motion, they can afford to optimize for strength and endurance.
- rramadass 2y ago
- kaon_ 2y agoFun read! It still surprises me no predator has been able to somehow take advantage of this evolutionary gap. You'd think one of the predators mentioned in the article would evolve a different way to the detect them. Then again, something similar probably happened many times in evolutionary history, and the victim species died out as a result. So if one of those predators would exist, we wouldn't have sloths. I guess this leaves them vulnerable to invasive species?
- amelius 2y agoTurtles aren't particularly fast either ...
- cess11 2y agoLeatherbacks can do 30 km/h sprints and they are very good at doing quick turns.
- jvanderbot 2y agoI do not understand the downvotes. I watched a half-meter-wide snapping turtle spend all day trundling its way to the water this spring. It looked like one of those world war 1 tanks. Of course, it had the armor of a tank and a 20 cm neck with a bolt cutter for a mouth.
- shellfishgene 2y agoIt's not like they never get eaten by predators, as the article says. It's only that they need ot shift the balance far enough in their favor to not die out, like by improving camouflage.
- ajnin 2y agoThe article also mentions that they have relatively little muscle mass, so maybe it is more rewarding to catch say a regular monkey rather than a sloth. Evolutionary traits usually come with a tradeoff, and if a predator evolved to be able to catch sloths more easily it might make them less able to catch the juiciest prey, so overall it might be more worthwhile to focus on the other animals and leave sloths off the table, so to speak.
- hcarvalhoalves 2y agoPeople have been maimed by sloths under the false assumption that, because it moves slowly, it isn’t dangerous. The animal is actually quite strong and can defend itself with the claws. In Brazil you can visit caves featuring scars on the rock from the pre-historic giant sloth’s claws. This funny animal descends from that! https://oglobo-globo-com.translate.goog/google/amp/brasil/noticia/2023/08/03/veja-como-era-a-preguica-gigante-que-habitava-caverna-pre-historica-de-minas-alvo-de-acao-da-justica.ghtml?_x_tr_sl=pt&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pt-BR&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://oglobo-globo-com.translate.goog/google/amp/brasil/no...
- inSenCite 2y agoSloths are pretty rad. But given their lack of thermal regulation, I wonder if this leaves them especially vulnerable to climate change.
- kruczek 2y agoThis reminds me of the same revelation I had when observing my cat in a backyard. There were many snails around, but my cat seemed completely oblivious to their presence; it wouldn't register them as living animals, because they would move so slowly.
- blueyes 2y agoFor people who like sloths, I highly recommend the Pygmy Slow Loris: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/pygmy-slow-loris https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/pygmy-slow-loris In America, you can find them at the DC zoo in a shadowed alcove under red light to simulate night time during visiting hours.
- butz 2y agoWhy such strange text formatting? Text color seems to change randomly, some paragraphs, words and even part of words are in bold.
- bilater 2y agoObligatory Zootopia Sloth scene: https://youtu.be/HHKwnUa3txo?si=ZblXuDa4RXtYXzzk https://youtu.be/HHKwnUa3txo?si=ZblXuDa4RXtYXzzk
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- veunes 2y agoMy spirit animal is a sloth. Manifesting it here
- opyate 2y agoTLC;DR Too low contrast; didn't read