Laziness and the truth about laziness: Being able to turn their heads 270 degrees, most die from going to the toilet

If lazy were a normal person, maybe they would never have to go to school because of their lateness. This arboreal animal sleeps up to 20 hours a day! And even when awake, sloth barely moves at all.

In fact, they are so slow and lazy that they grow moss all over their bodies. If sloths weren't champions of sloth, no one would dare take number 2. But why would they choose such a weird lifestyle?

Distinguishing Characteristics Lazy

Sloths are a suborder of animals belonging to the families Megalonychidae (two-toed sloths) and the family Bradypodidae (three-toed sloths), which live mainly in the rainforests of South America.

They are quite similar in appearance with a round head, sleepy sleepy eyes, tiny ears and a stout tail. The size of the sloth breed has two larger toes. Most of this species' time is spent hanging upside down from tree branches. Like the three-toed sloth, it likes to sit upright on the branches. The three-toed sloth's face color makes it look like it's smiling all the time.

The common feature of sloths is slowness and inactivity, along with a rather "dumb" appearance. Indifference to everything around makes many people think that they are slow to evolve and lag behind in the development of other animals.

But this is an evolution to adapt to their low-nutrient environment.

Sloth is one of the fastest and slowest mammals on the planet. The reason for this slowness is partly due to their poor eyesight.

They spend most of their lives just eating, sleeping and resting on the canopy of the rainforest. Most herbivores often supplement with more energy-rich foods such as fruits and nuts. But sloths, especially three-toed sloths, depend almost entirely on leaves. They have developed a sophisticated strategy to adapt to this tight diet.

First, they try to get the most out of their food. Sloths have a multi-chambered stomach that takes up a third of their body, they can spend from 5 to 7 days, even weeks, to digest a meal.

On the other hand, they minimize energy consumption by not moving too much. Most of their time is spent eating, resting and sleeping. They only come down to the ground once a week to defecate. When moving, lazy is not very agile. Crossing a normal road will also take up to 5 minutes.

With this fast-paced lifestyle, lazy doesn't need too much muscle. In fact, their muscle mass is 30% less than that of species of the same size. Sloths also use less energy to keep their bodies warm because their body temperatures can fluctuate by up to 5 degrees Celsius more than most mammals. Both physical and behavioral adaptations have minimized the sloth's energy expenditure and metabolism.

It was the slow pace that allowed sloths to thrive in the treetops. This also makes sloths a habitat for algae, both to help them camouflage and sometimes as a snack. Lazy really lazy!

Perfect camouflage

Some scientists think that sloths' slow behavior makes them less noticeable by predators like hawks and cats. In addition to providing nutrients for the hair, the moss growing on the body of this species is also an extremely good camouflage "coat" among the dense green trees. Lazy very rarely moves. About once a week, they go underground and clean their bodies by slowly pulling dirt out of their bodies with their claws. In case of being caught by predators, this species will quickly turn from a slow person to a true "professional boxer", they bite and use their claws to slash continuously at the opponent after that screams loudly.

Sloth uses its long arms to wade through water, cross rivers and swim across islands. They can also lower their metabolism and slow their heart rate down to a normal level by up to three times to easily dive underwater for 40 minutes.

Because of the lack of defense or fast movement speed, to evade enemies sloths choose camouflage. They feed in their plumage an entire ecosystem that includes symbiotic algae, numerous microorganisms, arthropods and a species of moth.

Moths that live on the sloth stem, perching on it along with the color of the algae can fool other predators that the sloth is just part of the stem. In addition, they are mostly immobile or slow to work, which strengthens that camouflage skill.

The problem is that when the moths lay eggs, they need a sheltered, warm, and nutrient-rich place to feed the larvae. Then there is no place as convenient as the sloth's own dung pit.

As a double job, when the butterflies mature from the dung pit and fly up to land on the sloth, they bring nutrients from the sloth's droppings to feed the microbial and algae communities that live on it.

So to see that sloths are really lazy, but they have also developed very smart survival strategies that are not inferior to other animals. This creature is probably worthy of existence and not a "bottom-up" life form as described by Georges Buffon.

The evidence is that sloths have existed on Earth for up to 64 million years, and there is no sign of being threatened with extinction, except for 2/6 species of sloths that live close to humans, are often hunted for their claws or like to climb. electricity poles and swings in residential areas.

Abilities only in Sloth

Sloths are also special animals when they can turn their heads 270 degrees due to the extra vertebrae in the neck. This allows them to sniff out predators coming from almost any direction. This is a particularly useful advantage as they spend almost all of their time immobile in trees.

In order to adapt to these characteristics, after millions of years of evolution, the current sloth's body also has changes unlike any other species.

Their limbs have exceptionally strong tendons; The tips of the fingers have curved claws like hooks that make them easy to grip and hang upside down from branches.

The sloth's circulatory system also has a special valve, which prevents blood pooling on the head - which often occurs when hanging upside down for too long.

Unlike other animals, many sloths have died of starvation despite being full of food. Simply because when it is cold, the digestive system of sloths is almost inactive. Even when the temperature warms up, the super slow rate of food digestion can also cause them to lose their lives because of a lack of nutrients.

The sloth's special claws are the reason why they always stay on the tree branch, whether they are fast asleep or even when they are dead. People have seen sloths long lost their lives but still hanging in the dense canopy.

Sloths have an ability that very few animals have, which is to urinate and defecate only once a week.

It is a difficult number to imagine for us, but for lazy, this is very normal. Every time they have to answer the call of biology, they have to crawl to the ground and find a place, dig a polite hole and then "solve".

However, this is also the most dangerous time, because they have to expose themselves to natural predators such as snakes, eagles, jaguars...

However, this disadvantage is fortunate for other species. Because of one "discharge", sloth can excrete an amount of feces equal to 1/3 of body weight!

A sloth can weigh from 6 to 10 kg, which means the amount of feces they discharge is about 2 kg - 3 kg. Imagine if the sloth became even more lazy, flushed from the tree and unfortunately fell on another animal's head? That is a tragedy.

Although slow, but rarely other animals can attack them, because they have extremely sharp claws. Normally, these claws help them hang on trees, but when in danger, they turn into weapons. Just a slap of the "lazy king", the carnivore tore its skin, splashing blood.

The mating season of Bradypus tridactylus is in March and April. Females are pregnant for up to 180 days and give birth to only 1 pup. The baby sloth was born by its mother hanging on its back from a tree. Newly born, young sloths know how to cling to hair quickly and live on the mother's belly. After 5 weeks of age, they can already climb on their own. They breastfed for about 1 month, then the mother chewed on the leaves. At 6 months old they feed themselves.

Although lazy, lazy is a very cute and friendly animal to humans. The number of lazy individuals is currently decreasing due to many different reasons.

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