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Three-toed Sloth - BRADYPUS TRIDACTYLUS
Endangered
Class: Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
The Name "Sloth": "Sloth" comes from Middle English "slowthe" which meant "slow." "Tridactylus" means "three-toed."
Location: Honduras to northern Argentina
Habitat: Arboreal. Woodland and along riverbanks, in areas where the plant trumpetwood grows.
Description: This sloth's head is round, the neck quite long and flexible, and the eyes and ears are small. The coat is bristly and dense, gray-brown in color with white and orange markings on the back. The legs are long, particularly the front legs, and the feet have long, curved claws (three on the front foot, and four on the hind foot). The underside of each foot is covered with hair. The sloth may reach two feet in length, with a short tail adding no more than three inches. It weighs 9 or 10 lbs.
Behavior: This sloth feeds only on trumpetwood leaves and fruit, which if finds by using its sense of smell. It lives in trees, moving very slowly among the branches in search of food. It spends many hours hanging from a horizontal branch, using the curved claws on all four feet as hooks. Sloths often look greenish because of algae growing on their long thick hair (what was the old saw about a rolling stone gathering no moss?). The sloth rarely descends to the ground.
Reproduction: The sloth makes an unmistakable "ay-ay" cry, which increases in frequency during the mating season. After a gestation period of 120 to180 days, the female delivers a single young.
Go to the Xenarthra Page to get a general discussion of this order of animals.
Go to the Two-toed Sloth to study the other sloth included in America Zoo.
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