Welcome to the society!

• Sloths hold the title as being the world’s slowest mammals.
• With their hook-like fingers and toes, sloths spend most of their life dangling upside-down underneath tree branches in the rainforests of Central and South America.
• While they are often mistaken as being a type of monkey, sloths are actually related to anteaters and armadillos!
• Sloths are part of the Folivora suborder within the ancient Xenarthra superorder.
• There are six species of sloth split between two very different families: two-fingered sloths and three-fingered sloths
• All sloths are folivores which means they eat only leaves.
• They have the slowest metabolic rate of any non-hibernating mammal and it takes a sloth 30 days to digest a single leaf!
• Sloths sleep for 8-10 hours a day and move slowly to avoid being seen by predators.
• Sloths often appear green due to the growth of algae and fungi in their fur. • This helps them camouflage in the rainforest canopy.
• No one knows how long sloths can live for.
• Sloths are solitary, but they will happily share trees with other sloths.
• A female sloth will have 1 baby approximately every 2 years and she will spend a full 12 months raising her baby.


How intelligent are sloths? This is a very poorly studied topic. It is true that sloths have small brains compared to their body size, however scientists are now realizing that this actually doesn’t relate to intelligence at all. The brains of sloths might be small but they are very much focused on the specific skills that they need for survival. For example, the section of the brain that controls forelimb movement is well developed for careful climbing, and the sloths spatial memory is particularly impressive.

Having a good spatial memory is important for sloths as they have poor eyesight. They navigate around their home ranges using their memory and sense of smell! However, the sloths social skills and problem solving abilities are somewhat lacking, which often leads to them being labelled as “stupid”.

Sloths nation