Sloth – “I’m In No Hurry”

 

 

 

 

 

Hanging upside down on average 15 hours a day you will find this camouflaged critter in the tropical rainforest canopies of South America.

 As you guessed by the picture it’s the sloth. My son once said he wanted one of these little critters. Now I’m not against having a bunch of critters as you know, but a sloth? Why on earth could he want a sloth? Well I figured it out once I started reading about them. They are about 21-29 inches long and only weigh between 9-17 pounds. That puts them in the range of about the size of our largest cat at the time. Okay I thought that’s not too big, would take up less space than our dogs. They have fur that runs from their stomach to their back so the rain can run off, kind of like their own built in rain coat. During the rainy season in their natural habitat the hair is often covered with greenish algae which provide them with camouflage against predators. They have long curved claws which allow them to hang and move from branch to branch which makes sense since they live in trees, trees of the rainforest. Now that might be a problem I don’t know if we have enough humidity and rain here in
Wisconsin for them. Maybe that won’t be too big of a problem for it since a sloth’s body temperature depends on the temperature around it. They do live in zoos so I guess we could figure something out. Oh wait, trees might also be a problem since most of our trees in our yard are soft needle pine. I guess he would have to build it a special home like we did for our iguana. Okay, I thought we could do that. I found out that they are pretty much vegetarians much like our iguana was, so that shouldn’t be a problem mainly eating leaves, shoots, nuts, berries, bark, and fruit. The have compartmented stomach muck like that of a cow and it can take a month or more for their food to pass through their digestive system. Hence they only pass urine and feces about once a week. There it is I found the reason for him wanting a sloth! Once a week clean up! Okay I have to admit that would be lot less work than cleaning up after our dogs or our 3 times a day litter pan scooping for our cats. But come on, there has to be more to it than just that. They do everything in the trees, most things upside down like eat, sleep, mate, and give birth. The only come down out of the trees to eliminate and change trees in search of food. Well we wouldn’t have to worry about the mating part since we would only have one and they are a solitary animal. But did you know that their gestation is about 10 months babies are born with claws, and weigh about 12oz. They are good swimmers so maybe we’d have to set the pool up for it. We wouldn’t have to worry about predators since it would be caged, but in the wild they fall prey to large snakes, jaguars and ocelots while on the ground because they move very slow. In some zoos sloths have reached the age of 30 some even as old as 40.

The whole idea of having a pet sloth seemed rather interesting to my son. But there are so many other factors that have to be taken into consideration. Like local/state zoning laws and permits, they are wild animals, not domestic pets. Sure they are kept in zoos where they are cared for by the experts, but in our back yard it’s not the proper place for them. That is unless one day we obtain enough property along with the necessary licensing and permits to properly house them along with other exotics. In addition, we would also need the experts for their veterinarian needs and to teach/help us with their care.

Sources:

http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/set/1478/sloth.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twotoed_sloth

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/SmallMammals/fact-sloth.cfm

http://www.americazoo.com/goto/index/mammals/126.htm

http://ladywildlife.com/animal/twotoedsloth.html