Paul Kibride, age 12, of Salix, ia., for his question:
What is a sloth?
A slothful person is too lazy to whisk through the day’ s duties and too careless To tend to details, such as neatness. The human failing of slothfulness is named After the sloth, the world's slacrest mammal. It is not quite fair to call him Slothful, because, being an animal, he is not guilty of human failings. He moves in The slowest slow motion becatase this happens to be his way of life. He is classed with the anteaters in the order Edentata, meaning the toothless Animals. But the sloth has a fm beg like teeth, though they are rootless and without enamel.
The ant bear, the armadillo and other edentate6 hunt for ants, but the sloth slow sloth lacks the ambition for such activity. He dines at a lazy lazy pace on the Cecropia leaves that grow in his native ,jungles of Central and South America. You might mistake the shaggy fellow for a stubby tailed bear cub, two feet long. But, unlike a bear, he has a long neck and a small round head with a pair of Flat, rounded ears. His eyes are dull and always sleepy, and he wears a dopey Expression at all times. You mould not expect such a do nothing character to be very bright. Ii: is no surprise to iearn that the sloth, who is the slowest of all the furry mammals, is also rated as one of the most unintelligent mammals. He is so inactive that flocks of moths often live undisturbed in his coarse, untidy hair.
Mossir alga plants often ;row in his shaggy coat, and during the rainy seasons the dopey old mossback is tinged with green. The sloth is just about helpless on the ground, though he swims very well whfn Dropped in the water. He is most at home on the branch of a tree where he hangs by his long claws. Isis head lolls down at the end of his long neck so that he gets an upside dawn vie<r of the world. He moves along his branch hand over hand, and people who have watched him say that he moves slower than the minute hand of a watch hand of a watch.
Two species of sloth make their homes in the new world jungles. The three toed sloth has three long claws on each of his feet. He belongs in the genus bradypus, meaning slow foot. The two toed sloth has two claws on each foot, and his genus is Choleopus, meaning lame foot.
A young sloth is always an only child, and hs is born during the hot summer season. He spends his babyhood spread out flat on his mother's shaggy stomach while she hangs upside down from a branch. He nibbles a few leaves for himself at the age of five weeks, and barring accidents he can expect to drift dreamily through 11 years of lazy living.