Sloths move on the ground with a crawling motion, rather than walking / Photo: Suzi Eszterhas This is one reason why sloths cannot walk across the ground like a quadruped the muscles responsible for ‘pushing’ can not produce enough force to lift their bodies off the ground for efficient locomotion (not to mention their claws also make this very difficult) and it takes an enormous amount of energy which the sloth cannot afford to lose. Sloth muscles are specialized for suspensory ‘upside-down’ locomotion they produce strong pulling and gripping motions, with very little strength for pushing. Even tiny babies are super strong! 4- Sloths can pull but they can’t push Sloth muscles appear to work on a sort of lever system – resulting in an immense volume of pulling strength with very little muscle mass and expending very little energy. What does Archimedes have to do with this? The anatomical organisation of the muscles themselves also contributes to their disproportionate strength. Read more: Do you think you are stronger than a sloth?.A sloth can fall asleep while dangling from a tree branch /Photo: Suzi Eszterhas The fibers of these muscles are organised differently from ours, being arranged at an angle rather than parallel to the length of the muscle, which makes their muscles pound-for-pound more powerful than ours. The sloths’ evolutionary mantra has been to reduce energy consumption in every possible way – more muscle requires higher energy consumption as a result, sloths have 30% less muscle mass than other similar-sized mammals. Read More: Mitigating the Squash Effect: Sloths Breathe Easily Upside Down.Sloths are very skinny underneath their thick fur! Photo: Suzi Eszterhas An adult sloth is approximately three times stronger than the average human, which is the result of some clever anatomical architecture. Sloths are often described as ‘nothing but bone, skin, and fur’ which is not inaccurate but does gives the wrong impression of our robust friends. Unfortunately, wild sloths do not have staff to do their bidding and will only sleep 7-10 hours per day – this is around the same as a human! To put things into perspective, sloths will often share their trees with troops of howler monkeys who sleep for up to 20 hours each day.Īergia (Greek: Ἀεργία, “inactivity”) / Image: 3- ‘Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world’ – Archimedes As she is the goddess of laziness, she spends most of her time sleeping and has servants do her work for her. She guards the Court of Hypnos in the Underworld, alongside the Gods of quietness and forgetfulness. The Greek goddess Aergia (pronounced AIR-gee-a) is the personification of inactivity or slothliness. Overgrown claws are much easier to break, and this is why sloths living in captivity often have damaged or deformed claws! Sloths in captivity often have overgrown nails on their fingers and toes 2- There is a Greek Sloth Goddess In these cases, the underlying bone is the same size, but the fingernail sheath is overgrowing because it isn’t being worn down by climbing as frequently or as intensely as their wild counterparts. In captivity sloths often have overgrown claws which curl painfully into the pads of their hands and feet, making climbing and feeding difficult. A two-fingered sloth with deformed fingers from a previous injury. In the wild, this can put the sloth at a great disadvantage as their claws are vital for life in the canopy. However, the claws will rarely regain their original shape, often growing back deformed. If they get broken or damaged, sloths can actually regrow their claws thanks to their low metabolic rate (in a similar way to when reptiles regrow their limbs). Sloth claws achieve their shape and sharpness by constant use climbing trees. Three-fingered sloth skeleton showing the claws/fingers. These bones are covered by a sheath of the same material that makes up our fingernails and hair (keratin). While sloth claws look like overgrown nails, they are actually formed by elongated and curved distal phalange bones protruding from their limbs. Here we bring you eight surprising things that you (probably) didn’t know about sloths!ġ- Do sloths have nails? Or are their claws made of bone? Because so little is known about sloths (and much of what we do know is admittedly bizarre), people are eager to believe whatever nonsense they hear or read on the internet This ‘fact’ was actually invented in the book ‘A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ and is definitely not true. You will be surprised to know how much of this information is untrue.įor example, many people believe that the leading cause of death in sloths is when they fall out of the tree after mistaking their own arms for tree branches. What is the skeleton of a Sloth like? What are their claws made of? The internet is full of ‘facts’ about sloths. 8 Facts You (probably) Didn’t Know About Sloths’ anatomy
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