Zootopia has made sloths the star animals of concern again, making people remember their "slowness". However, friends who pay attention to natural magazines should have "heard", this slow guy, is regarded as a "water monkey" in our country fire.
What's going on? I don't know when, some video platforms have appeared a variety of hunting videos about "this is the water monkey pulling people into the water" and "catching the water monkey live", and most of the so-called "water monkey" images are - sloths.
Otter: You've just mutated! Your whole family mutates!
This can be busy with the major popular science bloggers to save everyone's IQ, the funniest of which is that the museum magazine has been asked many times to identify "water monkeys" on a certain blog and a certain tone.
Sloth, a kind of animal distributed only in the tropical rainforest of Central and South America, I believe many people have seen popular science articles about them swimming, slow movement is not really lazy blabla and the like, encyclopedia Jun first do not mention these anecdotes, let's first press the most basic to come.
sloth
Realm: Animal kingdom Animalia
Phylum: Chordata phylum Chordata
Order: Mammalia
General order: Heteroarticular order Xenarthra
Order: Phi Mao Pilosa
Suborder: Sloth suborder Folivora
Sloth is a collective term for this "sloth suborder" animal, whose scientific name is "Folivora", which means "leaf eater" in Latin. They are a very old class of animals, and it is not surprising that they are featured in the cartoon Ice Age. Sloths were originally divided into 8 families, but 6 of them have long since become extinct (whether this has anything to do with humans, I'll see later). Below is a diagram of sloth suborder species (evolutionary trees)
Click to enlarge to see
Say it one by one. The Caribbean sloth family, as the name suggests, is a tree sloth that inhabits the Caribbean region, and they appeared 32 million years ago and became extinct about 5,000 years ago.
Fossils of Caribbean sloths
Then there's the sloth family (the name, really a little bit blue skinny), which went extinct even earlier and disappeared 11,000 years ago.
The Earth Sloths lived between about 2.3 million and 11,000 years ago, and they really live up to their name, with a body length of 6 meters and a height of 5 meters, which is taller than Asian elephants! If they could survive to this world, how spectacular!
Fossil skeletons of the ground sloth that exist in Chicago
Now we all know that sloths can swim, and the genus of sea sloths in the extinct land sloth family is even more powerful, they are half-aquatic, fully aquatic animals that evolved during the Great Migration of North and South American organisms, feeding on seaweed and seaweed, similar to today's manatees.
Skeleton of a sea sloth on display in Paris, France
According to the skeleton restoration of the sea sloth beast, this is more in line with the appearance of the "water monkey"
First appeared 35 million years ago, extinct in 11,000 years ago, the largest body length of up to 3 meters, in the past, scientists put the Caribbean sloth and the existing two-toed sloth also under this family, and later through collagen and mitochondrial DNA molecular analysis research has the current classification. Scientists have tried to reconstruct their appearance through their skeletons, which is roughly the following ↓
The leptodondae was also extinct about 11,000 years ago, and the skeleton looks different from other families↓
There is also a section of Scelidotheriidae, the encyclopedia Jun checked for half a day did not find the translation of the Chinese, they are also extinct more than 10,000 years ago, and there are currently their skeletons on display in the French National Museum of Natural History.
Most of the above 6 families became extinct 11,000 years ago, and 12,000 years ago, with the advent of the Mesolithic Age, scientists found a lot of evidence in North and South America that the sloth was killed, cooked, and eaten by humans, which may be the reason for their population decline, but more scientists believe that the climate change brought about by the end of the Quaternary ice age may be the cause of the extinction of the sloth. As for the Caribbean sloth, it became extinct after humans arrived in the area, which may be related to human predation.
Let's talk about two extant families: sloths and dipterocarpies. There are six extant varieties in both families. The sloth genus is commonly known as the three-toed sloth, distinguished from the two-toed sloth, which has 4 varieties, while the two-toed sloth genus has only two varieties of two-toed sloth and Huo's sloth.
4 varieties under the three-toed sloth:
Pygmypus pygmaeus
Mane three-toed sloth Bradypus torquatus
Bradypus tridactylus
Brown-throated three-toed sloth Bradypus variegatus
Among them, the populations of pygmy three-toed sloths and bristle three-toed sloths are very small, and the pygmy three-toed sloth lives only in the mangrove forest on a small island in Panama, and in the past, it was estimated that they had 300 heads, but in recent statistics, their number has been found to be less than 80. Those interested can check out this short film shot by the Discovery UK Channel ↓
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The most widely distributed in the world are brown-throated three-toed sloths, which are the prototype of the "lightning" in Zootopia. The difference from the white-throated three-toed sloth can be seen from the name!
Diphtheria three-toed sloth
The brown-throated one is, of course, the brown-throated three-toed sloth
The difference between members of the two-toed sloth family and the sloth family is that the forefoot has only two toes, and the two-toed sloth family contains the two-toed sloth and the Hodge sloth. What's the difference between the two? Or the difference in the color of the throat coat. The throat of the Hodge sloth is noticeably white, while the two-toed sloth is dark.
Huo's sloth, two toes, diphtheria, is characterized by obvious features
Two-toed sloth
Sloths are particularly camouflaged, and their fur is particularly suitable for algae and moss to grow in it, and these green plants can make their hair green for easy camouflage. In addition, some scientists believe that sloths sometimes lick the algae on their bodies, which is a way for them to obtain additional but boards.
If sloths don't end up living in a hot, humid environment covered by forest, they may be more lively and have a faster pace of movement. But after countless generations of evolution, they have reached a pace of life that is perfectly suited to their environment.
Well, the important thing to say three times, this animal china does not, they can swim but not water monkeys, the next time who lets you watch what "water monkeys" live, remember to throw this article to him.
Wen 丨 searched for encyclopedia Jun
Imagery from National Geographic, Wikipedia
Source: BBC, Wikipedia, Discovery, National Geographic