what is a sloth?

Answer 1

A sloth is an animal of the Central and South America belonging to the families Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae, part of the order Pilosa. Most scientists call these two families the Folivora suborder, while some call it Phyllophaga.

They eat insects as well as small lizards & carrion. Of course, they eat leaf & spend nearly all part of their lives in the trees. Sloths mainly live in Cecropia trees.

For their slow acting (slow in digesting food) stomach, the leaves don't provide much nutrition to them. Their weight averages from 8 to 15 kilos (17.6 to 33 pounds) with stomach itself being about 5 kilos (12 pounds). The digestion in them takes about a month or so. They have very low metabolic rates according to their size (less than 1/2 of that expected for a creature of their size), and maintain low body temperatures when active (30 to 34 degrees Celsius), and still lower temperatures when resting.

Answer 2

Sloths are medium-sized mammals that live in Central and South America belonging to the families Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae, part of the order Pilosa. Most scientists call these two families the Folivora suborder, while some call it Phyllophaga.

Sloths are omnivores. They may eat insects, small lizards and carrion, but their diet consists mostly of buds, tender shoots, and leaves.

Sloths have made extraordinary adaptations to an arboreal browsing lifestyle. Leaves, their main food source, provide very little energy or nutrition and do not digest easily: sloths have very large, specialized, slow-acting stomachs with multiple compartments in which symbiotic bacteria break down the tough leaves.

As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloth's body-weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take as long as a month or more to complete. Even so, leaves provide little energy, and sloths deal with this by a range of economy measures: they have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a creature of their size), and maintain low body temperatures when active (30 to 34 degrees Celsius or 86 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit), and still lower temperatures when resting. Sloths mainly live in Cecropia trees.

Answer 3

A sloth is a tree dwelling mammal from South America. They spend almost their entire lives in trees and only come down to use the bathroom. They feed entirely on leaves and so have very slow metabolisms, this in turn means they move very, very slow. They move so slowly that some have algae growing in their hair. Oddly enough, they can swim if they have to. Their use to be giant ground sloths all over North America, but now the only members of the group left are the tree sloths in South America.

Answer 4

Jack is most definitely a sloth. He does nothing but sit on his laptop all day.

Answer 5

OMG, go to wikipedia and type sloth!!!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth

Answer 6

it is the slowest moving land animale in the world mostly located in south america Amazon area

Answer 7

Never ask a question that you can search on google. def. a Y!A rule of thumb.... :D