Lee Lapon, age 10, of Brighton, Mass., for the question:
What is a ground sloth?
The ground sloth said Goodbye to our world many long years ago. There was a time when he and his relatives roamed throughout the New World from Mexico to Patagonia. It was thought that the last of the big furry fellows disappeared before the dawn of man s history. Then soma new discoveries were unearthed. The rolled up skin of a giant ground sloth was found in South America along with traces of human beings, The big fellows must have shared the New World with the early Indiana.
More interesting evidence was found in the crater of an old volcano in Mexico. Here, buried in the ashy dust, was the body of a bear sized ground sloth. It was plain that the remains had been there no longer than tma: thousand years. So the ground cloths, big and little, roamed the Americas within the past one or two thousand years.
Many fossil remains of the ground sloth have been unearthed bones, hair, claws and teeth. The biggest of the plan was larger than a modern elephant. All covered with long shaggy hair this fells must have looked like a frightening monster indeed. Nevertheless, there is evidence that he did not scare the Indians one bit. They may even have kept herds of these creatures for meat and leather. Other ground cloths of ancient days were no bigger than foxes.
Though the ground sloth has gone, he still has close relatives living in the world. His cousins are the tree cloths, also of Central and South America. These fellows can perhaps tell us what their departed cousins were like. Certainly, if the ground cloths were anything like their modern cousins, the Indians had no cause ~ie:, fear them even if they were big as mountains. For the tree sloth is among the gentlest of animals and he is certainly the most lazy, slow moving mammal in the world.
In fact, when we say that someone is slothful we are comparing him to the lazy, lazy sloth. This fellow is sometimes so slow moving that certain algae set up housekeeping in his shaggy fur. During the rainy season, this algae tinges his coat with green. We might call him a moss back
The modern tree sloth spends almost all his time in the trees naturally. There he hangs upside down by his clawed feet. He sleeps eighteen hours a day, nibbles a few leaves and spends the remainder of his day resting. The ancient ground sloth may also have been a lazy leaf eater and no match for the big cats that prowl the bungles of South America. This helps to explain why the big fellow is no longed with us.