The sloth can be said to be the representative of the lazy world, and its laziness can be reflected in its name - the tree "lazy". In the daily life of a sloth, laziness is its home field, and even when it comes to escape, it is too lazy to escape.
Moving very slowly, seeing the "lazy" state of the sloth, many people are wondering how this creature lived to the 21st century? Why wasn't it eaten to extinction by predators?
<h1>Notorious sloth</h1>
Sloths are a general term for mammals, heteroarticular orders, Phiphis, and sloths, with a total of 2 families, 2 genera and 6 species, mainly divided into two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths, but these two sloths did not evolve from the same ancestor.
Sloths are very similar in shape to monkeys, slow to move, very lazy, often hanging upside down on branches with their claws for hours without moving, so they are called sloths, which mainly live in the tropics of Central and South America.
Although sloths have feet, they cannot walk, they are dragging their bodies forward with their forelimbs, and the speed is very slow... It's only 0.2 m/s, and it takes at least 2 months for the sloth to move 2 km, and even the tortoise climbs faster than the sloth.
Among them, hetero-joints refer to some joints of sloths that are a bit special, such as normal animals, giraffes and fish, etc., and the number of cervical vertebrae is only 7, while the three-toed sloth reaches 8 to 10, so the cervical spine is very developed, can be rotated 270 degrees, you can try how many degrees can your neck turn?
In nature, the weak eat the strong is the norm, and animals like sloths are not at the top of the food chain and move very slowly, so it is easy for predators to hunt sloths, but sloths have so miraculously multiplied on the earth and have not yet become extinct.
<h1>
</h1>
<h1>Sloths did not become extinct for the following main reasons:</h1>
1. Self-disguise is stronger
The body of the sloth is gray-brown, very similar to the trunk, and it is hung on the tree for a long time, and the body is covered with green algae and so on, with the same protective effect as camouflage, plus they usually hardly move, if they are attacked, just close their eyes and hide it, so the sloth's concealment is very strong.
2. Energy consumption is relatively small.
Sloths almost don't eat much, it may take a month or so to digest a leaf, or even 50 days, plus the speed of action is very slow, so the calorie consumption is also very small, is a kind of energy saving to the extreme of mammals.
On the other hand, we humans, as mammals, have a constant body temperature, and the disadvantage of the evolution of constant temperature is energy consumption, so we eat more, but sloths are also mammals, eat less, and do not need to hunt, so that the possibility of danger is greatly reduced.
3. Sloth's meat is not tasty
The fur on the sloth's body is incredibly hard, and the local natives describe it this way, "the meat of the sloth is smellier than the meat of the monkey, fishier than the meat of the crocodile, and dryer than the firewood", which can be imagined how unpalatable the meat of the sloth is.
4. Sloths are not easy to catch
The sloth's claws are very powerful, very strong, and live on the trunk, grasping the tree tightly, and the carnivorous raptor generally cannot take the sloth away because of these two points, so the sloth can survive.
This does not mean that sloths are invincible in the world, just take the horned eagle, which is big and powerful, and it is easy to grab the sloth and fly.
<h1>Although the sloth is slow, it is still very active in finding a wife. </h1>
Sloth is a solitary animal, whenever it comes to the breeding season, the female will make a sound, at this time the male will immediately set off to "go to the Wushan Cloud Rain", which means that in the sloth, the female is active, and the male sloth has to run for several kilometers in order to breed the breeding season!