This creature (Bradypus variegatus) is as sluggish as its name suggests. Not only does it rest or sleep for up to 20 hours a day, but every move it makes is made incredibly slowly. The brown-throated sloth is particularly slow on the ground. Its curved feet and weak limbs prevent it from standing so it can only crawl or grasp something to haul itself up. This gentle animal is far more at home in the tops or middle layers of trees where it hangs upside down from all four limbs, moving slowly paw-by-paw along the branches. All activities are carried out in this position including eating, mating and giving birth. A single offspring is born once a year and spends the first five weeks or so of its life clinging to its mother's belly.
Sloths eat tree leaves, shoots and foliage, mainly of the cecropia tree that grows near clearings, river banks and forest edges.
.png "Brown-Throated Sloth (Barbapapa Around the World).png (228 KB)")
