Three-toed sloths
Three- toed sloths are tree-living mammals from South and Central America. There are four living species of three-toed sloths. These are the Brown-throated Sloth, the Manned Sloth, the Pale-throated Sloth, and the Pygmy Three-toed Sloth. Although they are quite slow in trees, they are quite agile at swimming. Famously slow-moving, the sloth travels at top speed at 0.24 kilometers per hour or 0.15 miles per hour. They cling to their mother's bellies for nine months or so. They cannot walk on all four limbs, and so they must use their front arms and claws to drag themselves across the rain forest floor. The tree-toed sloth is arboreal, which means tree-dwelling, with a body that is adapted to hang by its limbs.
Characteristics
It lives high in the canopy, but descends once a week to defecate on the forest floor. Its long, coarse, grayish-brown fur often appears greenish, not due to pigment, but to algae growing on it. The sloth's greenish color and sluggish habits provide an effective camouflage; hanging quietly, the sloth resembles a bundle of leaves. Large curved claws help the sloth to keep a strong grip on tree branches. Three-toed sloths are about the size of a small dog or a large cat, with the head and body having a combine length of about 18 inches. They weigh about 8-10 pounds. Unlike two-toed sloths they have a short tail about 2 to 3 inches long and they have three clawed toes on each limb. However all sloths have three toes, the difference is found in the number of fingers; meaning that they are more appropriately referred to as the three fingered sloths.
About sloths
The sloth is the world's slowest mammal, so slow that algae starts growing on their coat. Sloths are identified by the number of prominent claws that they have on each front foot. Three-toed sloths are built for life in the treetops; all sloths are. They have a very powerful grip that allows them to hang on the branches of trees, some dead sloths have been known to retain their grip and remain hanging from the branch. Three-toed sloths also have an advantage that few mammals have. They have an extra neck vertebrae that allows them to turn their heads 270 degrees. The sloth is a nocturnal mammal, so it is most active at night. The three-toed sloth is also a herbivore and it eats mostly leaves young shoots and fruits. They do have very few predators, which are the jaguar and the harpy eagle. Its main defense, besides camouflage is clawing and nipping at an attacker. Members of this species live about 25-30 years.
How they live
They move between tree up to four times a day, although they prefer to keep to a particular type of tree, which varies between individuals, perhaps as a means of allowing multiple sloths to occupy overlapping home ranges without competing with each other. Three-toed sloths have no incisor or canine teeth, just a set of peg-shaped cheek teeth that are not clearly divided into premolars and molars. The three-toed sloth, unlike most other mammals, does not fully maintain a constant body temperature. That limits is to warm environments.