Julie Madsen, age 8, of St. Paul, Minnesota, for her question:

Where do you find a two toed or three toed sloth?

The sloth cousins are strictly New World animals but they do not make their homes in North America. The two toed sloth enjoys his lazy life in certain dense jungles of Central and South America. His favorite countries are Costa Rica and Panama, Colombia and Equador. The three toed sloth can be found over a somewhat larger territory. He too enjoys life in the treetops of tropical jungles. And he is even lazier than his two toed cousin. He can be found in the jungles of Honduras, all the way south to Peru where streams run down the slopes of the Andes mountains to join the mighty Amazon River.

In olden times, sloth was another word for sloppy laziness. It was borrowed from the sloth cousins who are so very slow and lazy in their ways. The are dog sized animals with sleepy faces. Their feet look like shaggy mittens with long, strong claws. They hang by their four feet, sagging from the boughs. The sloths move so slowly that plants have time to grow in their fur. Their dark, shaggy coats are often tinged with miniature green alga plants.