Lazy King - Lazy to grow moss

In the animal world, perhaps Bradypus tridactylus is the largest but most lazy animal, so it is placed with an ugly name: "Sloth". Few animals move more slowly than sloths, they are known as "slower than turtles". The maximum speed of these animals is unacceptable: measuring a total of a whole day, they move less than 30 meters.

(Photo: tropicalhardwoods)

The child Bradypus tridactylus only likes to eat leaves, fruits and young branches of the plant Cecropia lyratiloba. They find food like a blind person: by sniffing and touching because their vision and hearing are less developed, it is impossible to find food in the way that other animals normally do.

Looking at them eating, we can't help but get annoyed: They slowly pull in and eat things within the reach of their mouths, at an extremely slow pace. These are external and internal actions: Their bodies digest food too slowly - about 1 month before digesting 1 stomach full of food. Due to eating and drinking so the "lazy King" body had to adapt: ​​Their bodies always sought to absorb as much as possible nutrients in the food. Besides, "lazy King" stomach is also big enough to contain a quantity of food equivalent to 1/3 of body weight. A large amount of food.

Sloth has an extremely different style of tree life: They can hang themselves for hours on end. In this position, they look like dead-end branches, so they are disguised before evil beasts. Normally, they hang themselves on the tree, when they eat up their stomachs to the sky, when they are sleeping, they also turn their backs to the sky, even when they are laying in the position of the belly to the sky, while the back is facing the ground. For most of their lives, they live like that "paradoxically".

It seems easy to be good bait for evil beasts, but "lazy kings" also have some self-defense moves: Each finger and every toe has a long and curved nail, enough to cause deep wounds. A blow with sharp claws can make the beast to stop. Normally, the claws curled like hooks that help them hang, move and "make a statue" on the tree. They camouflage very well, especially in the rainy season when green algae grow much on their feathers. The coat is medium long, thick, the outer coat has slots, blue algae grow in these slots, giving them bluish-colored fur. They were still motionless, so they looked like dead tree branches. Must be lazy "have class" to create for themselves the green moss shirt like that.

For most of their lives, these special animals only live on trees, but sometimes they go to the ground.

Each week, sloths go to the ground once to go to the toilet into a hole they create with their tails. These animals are also "knowledgeable " and " know how to maintain hygiene", even if the story is very dangerous to them.

(Photo: u-blog) When they were on the ground, they could only lie on their stomachs in the sky, leaning on their stomachs and dragging their bodies hard thanks to their limbs and claws. Therefore, if they go to the ground, they are easy to become good bait for jaguars and many other wild animals.

While climbing is extremely slow, moving one at a time, and the ground is extremely clumsy, surprisingly, these lazy big animals can swim easily underwater. The "lazy king" could be better in the water than any animal on land.

They have an unusual feature: their necks are especially easy to turn around . Sloths have more mammals than two cervical vertebrae - allowing them to rotate their heads gently around a 270 degree arc (sloths have 9 neck vertebrae while most mammals have only 7 stings) ancient life).

The king is lazy to sleep throughout the day, when sleeping often puts his head between the front limbs. they work at night and often live alone, ready to chase other sloths of the same gender into their living areas.

The mating season takes place from March to April. After a pregnancy of 120-180 days, the female gives birth to only one calf. They lay babies right in the letter, hanging from the tree. Newly born, lazy on her mother's hair and living in her mother's arms until 5 weeks old, at that time they were able to take care of sticking to the trunk and foraging. Young babies are breastfed for about 1 month, then fed with food chewed by their mothers. Young children live around their mothers until they are 6 months old.

About shape: they have a round head, lying on a long, flexible neck. The eyes and ears are tiny, compared to their bulky bodies. The coat is gray-brown, thick and jagged with white and yellow spots on the back. The long limbs, the front arms are longer than the hind legs. The palms and the soles of the feet are hairy. The length of the adult body is about 55cm, the tail is about 7cm long, weighs about 4.5kg. They are often silent, but they can also make screeching sounds.

Distributed in Central and South America in the forest and along the river, where the tree Cecropia lyratiloba lives.

(Photo: hedweb)