Why Are Sloths So Slow?

“For sloths, it’s one that works and is based primarily on metabolism and adapting to that change! Sloths are eating incredibly poor food. Plants do everything they possibly can to guard against being eaten, from tying up material in difficult to digest things like cellulose or lignin to producing compounds to actively reduce the efficiency of their digestion! Sloths have overcome many of these defenses by digesting food for extremely long times. By taking longer to digest the food and developing internal adaptations to do so, they can get energy out of a very abundant resource in the tropics; however, this comes at a price: they are limited in speed! Sloths move extremely slowly, so once they’re spotted, they’re easy game. Fortunately for the sloths, they’ve managed to develop forms of crypsis to avoid being seen! They can move so slowly that they are actually able to host algae and plant material in their fur, making them blend into their surroundings more easily. Moving slowly also draws less attention in general, so they can avoid being spotted that way.”

Unidan comments on Sloth crawling out of the water.


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