Lincoln Kern, age 10, of Indianapolis, Indiana, for his question:

What is a tree sloth?

You might mistake the sloth for a shaggy toy animal, about twenty inches long. His face looks rather pinched and somebody forgot to add ears to his hairy round head. At the end of his long hairy legs there are very strong claws, which are curved to hook around tree branches. His stumpy little tail is not worth mentioning. His favorite position is handing upside down with the claws of his four feet hooked around a branch.

He hangs there for ages without moving a muscle    and all that time you might think he is not a real live animal. Actually the sloth is said to be the laziest and slocaest animal in the world. If he had to chalk, it would take him six and a half hours to go one mile    at top speed. But he prefers to stay in his jungle trees, inching at a snail's pace among the highest boughs. Some of his cousins have three¬clawed toes and some have two clawed toes. Their secret homes are in certain tropical forests of Central and South America