Sloths are not lazy

The characteristic image of a lazy creature who sleeps almost all day has been turned upside down. Instead of sleeping for more than 16 hours a day as observed in captivity, the sloths in the wild sleep less than 10 hours.

(Photo: BBC)

Scientists have caught sloths living in the Panama rainforest and attached them to a sleep monitoring device. The results may help to understand sleep disorders in humans.

Lead researcher Niels Rattenborg at the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg, Germany, said the first study proved to be able to record the sleep of wild animals.

"The most interesting finding is that the sloths sleep only 9.6 hours a day, much less than what people still believe and less than the study of sloths kept in captivity before."

"Therefore, they may still be slow in speed of movement, but in sleep they are not completely abnormal."

According to scientists, animals have different amounts of sleep. For example, pythons sleep 18 hours a day, while giraffes only need to sleep for 2 hours.

To understand sleeping habits in lazy species in the wild, scientists from Germany, Switzerland and the United States have created a small machine that can monitor brain activity during sleep. They caught three female sloths living in the rainforest on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. These animals are attached tracking devices and then released.

After being recaptured a few days later, the data showed that they slept an average of 9.6 hours a day, while the captive sloths slept up to 16 hours.

According to Dr. Neil Stanley at Norfolk and Norwich University, England, captive animals often sleep more because they are satisfied with all needs.