Speaking of the world's laziest animal, many people will think of Australia's national treasure animal koala, because this guy, like the giant panda, basically eats and sleeps, does not like to play, and sleeps with the tree all day long, sleeping almost 19 hours a day. But the animal that I want to talk about today is probably going to subvert the cognition of many people.
I believe that many people's understanding of sloths is derived from a 3D cartoon called "Zootopia", as a civil servant of the Animal City Mammal Vehicle Management Office (DMV), a sloth named "Lightning" spits out a word while talking and wants to rest for five minutes, and even the action of laughing or collecting documents is as impressive as slow motion.
Due to the cute image and slow work style, the "lightning" sloth immediately circled countless fans, many people directly made it into an emoji when working with documents and talking, and even some people cosplayed its expressions and actions directly, so as to open a party when all kinds of funny.
Look at the silly and cute image of the sloth, but it is named "lightning", and there is no one
There are no wonders in the world! In real life, sloths are indeed "lazy" enough, to what extent will they be "lazy"? Let's list a few of them for you to see first.
The sloth is extremely slow, it has feet but can not be used for walking, but by the front limbs to drag the body to move forward, so to move a distance of 2 kilometers takes a full month, calculated that an hour to walk less than 3 meters, much slower than a snail (about 8.5 meters / hour) at full speed.
After the sloth cubs accidentally fall from the tree, both the sloth and the sloth can "lazy" to go down to the tree to rescue.
Digesting an average of 1 palm leaf thoroughly can take up to 1 month.
In the face of predators such as jaguars and pythons, Shuse will also yawn calmly.
Sloths are the only wild animals with plants (moss, green algae) on their bodies, and can also "raise moths" - sloth moths.
In fact, sloths, whether two-toed sloths or three-toed sloths, are extremely slow, and they spend the rest of their time hanging upside down like gourds on vines, including life and death, except for the of the tree!
Sloth is a common name for the suborder Sloths of the mammalian order Phindosaurus that inhabit the tropical rainforests of Central america to South America, with a total of 2 families and 2 genera and 6 species (including: pygmy three-toed sloth, mane three-toed sloth, diphtheria three-toed sloth, brown-throated three-toed sloth, Hochsian sloth, two-toed sloth), because of slow movement, and commonly used claws hanging upside down on branches for several hours without moving, so it is called sloth.
Although there is little difference in the "appearance" of the 6 types of sloths, there are still large (many) differences, such as the two-toed sloth and the three-toed sloth divided by the number of toes in the previous arm, and some three-toed sloths have only two toes on the forearm. Due to the large difference in structure between two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths, some scholars have placed the two in different families, while the sloth family only retains three-toed sloths.
Sloths are generally 50 to 80 cm long (excluding the tail length of about 7 cm), weigh between 4 and 8 kg, in addition to, inhabit trees all year round, eating leaves (especially palm leaves), fruits, their vision and hearing are not very developed, but the sense of smell is very sensitive, natural enemies are mainly birds of prey (especially American horned eagles) and pythons.
It is difficult to give a direct answer to the question of why sloths are so lazy, but we can look at the essence through the phenomenon, and find the answer backwards by analyzing the activity laws and physiological characteristics of sloths.
As mentioned above, the sloth baby accidentally fell from the tree, but its parents can "ruthlessly" not rescue, this is mainly because the speed of the sloth walking is faster than the turtle speed, and it has not waited for the reaction, not to mention whether the little sloth will be thrown to death, other animals on the ground have already eaten it, what can you expect to do at a speed of 0.2 meters / second? Moreover, the sloth is not stuck until the last resort to go down the tree to, how can it be so troublesome?
And from a physiological point of view, although the sloth lives in the humid and hot rainforest, because its movement is extremely slow, it hardly exercises all day, so the energy consumption is extremely low, and it only needs to eat a small amount of leaves or fruits to survive. And sloths mainly feed on palm leaves, because this leaf is relatively low in nutrients, the energy provided is limited, and worse, palm leaves are difficult to digest, for sloths, the average complete digestion of 1 palm leaf, through the gastrointestinal tract in the cellulase decomposition into glucose takes about 1 month, it can be said that the sloth is not easy to convert a little energy is basically used in the digestive process.
It is precisely because the energy consumption of sloths is particularly low, and most of the energy has been exhausted during digestion, so it is difficult to maintain a constant body temperature, so as a mammalian sloth, even if the body temperature fluctuates more than 10 degrees, it is not life-threatening, almost comparable to warm animals such as snakes and frogs.
In addition, the digestion of the sloth is also surprisingly slow, so that it has to balance the normal supply of energy obtained by digestion by minimizing energy consumption. And because sloths digest too slowly, so their stomachs are usually filled with about one-third of the body weight of food, and about 7 days or so to pull a stink, and their upside-down habits did not cause the internal organs to be squeezed to affect life, scientists found that the body structure of sloths has fully adapted to the needs of upside down, because they have evolved to the internal organs are "pasted" on the ribs and buttocks.
The sloth is slow to move, and the smell of pulling down the tree is tantamount to risking his life, and he will be attacked by natural enemies such as pythons and jaguars, but he attaches great importance to the matter of defecation and appears to be full of ritual.
According to a research report by the university of Wisconsin research team in the United States, the reason why sloths are not "airdrops", but "not afraid of danger" insisting on going down the tree row is actually to raise a moth named "sloth moth", and this moth is believed to live only on the body of sloths, and need to use the sloth's feces to lay eggs and hatch.
The sloth moth is also beneficial to the sloth, the sloth moth dies and is decomposed by microorganisms can produce nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus ions required for the growth of green algae and moss, making the color of the moss and green algae that provide a protective effect on the sloth more "realistic", thus providing it with a protective color closer to nature.
Darwin, a biologist and founder of evolution, once said that the survival of the fittest is a matter of natural selection, and the reason why sloths can reproduce and inhabit in cruel nature has its reasons for existence, mainly the following 3 points.
It inhabits trees all year round, and the dense branches in the rainforest allow sloths to escape predators such as pythons and jaguars.
Greenery such as moss and green algae grow all over the sloth's body, providing a protective coat that helps sloths better hide in the jungle, making it difficult to spot, the American horned eagle, one of the large birds of prey.
Similar to the honey badger "flat-headed brother" in the eyes of Africans, the meat quality of the sloth is not very good, according to the indigenous people of the rainforest tribes in South America, the sloth meat is both fishy and very chai, and has no impact, eating at most has a feeling of fullness, and will not fight its idea unless it is a last resort.
Although sloths are really "lazy" maddening, they are not ambiguous about mating, which is the key to the normal reproduction of the population.
Except for a few species of sloths that breed in the spring (estrus), the rest can breed all year round, and when the estrus period is in, the female sloth will take the initiative to approach the male sloth and make a sound, while the male sloth will happily go to Wushan Cloud Rain to cut the west window candle.
What is more interesting is that the "old king next door" is also a general version in the sloth world, so the male sloth will not hesitate to spend energy to run to a few kilometers away for a month or two to cloud the rain, which shows that the sloth is really enough to fight for that moment. Unfortunately, the mating time of sloths is only 5 seconds on average, and the psychological shadow area of male sloths is sought.
Sloths have a gestation period of 4 to 6 months, and each litter produces 1 cub, and they can generally eat the leaves themselves for 2 months, but first lick the leaf fragments chewed by the sloth mother, and by learning and inheriting the female sloth's preference for a certain leaf, they can obtain the unique intestinal microorganisms that specifically digest the leaves.
In short: the reason why sloths are "lazy" but can still survive in complex tropical rainforests is probably to play this "laziness" to the extreme! Isn't there a saying that you can't afford to hide?
Scientific vision, different insights; pay attention to likes, waist is entangled, welcome to comment and share!