January 29, 2022 • 54 mins
Everyone knows sloths are super slow, but do you know they’re slow because their bodies produce an astoundingly small amount of energy? And did you know that might be an adaptation that protects them from predators? Sloths are awesome and we prove it in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode on sloths.
Everybody knows that sloths spring the absolute best out of humans,
and I suspect I'm working on a theory here that
it's because we have some evolutionary memory of some moment
where human beings were saved from extinction through the direct
(00:22):
intervention of sloths. Like I said, it's a theory and
I'm still working out the details here, but I'll keep
you posted in the meantime. Enjoy this wonderful episode on sloths.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(00:49):
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Josh t
over there. They can about the number twenty three, just
sitting there thinking about until see that's right, I forgot that. Yeah,
he's in Illuminati stuff if I remember correctly. So he's
also look look at this guy. He is so good, Chuck.
(01:10):
He knows to just sit there and keep quiet even
though he's dying inside right now, to talk about the
number twenty three. Uh if I had just pulled out
some random show from like our archive from years ago?
Could you see who the producer was? Oh? I don't know,
Let's let's give it a try. Um geez, Now I
have to think of a show that we did years ago.
(01:30):
Uh well, since we're doing an animal show today, the
only I can think of his animals elephants, Jerry that
long ago? Probably Jerry? Or how about this? Can you
name any shows that other guest producers were on off
the top of your head? Um, no, this game turns
(01:51):
so lame so fast. I feel like we we well,
Matt Frederick's too busy these days, but we can't have
Matt anymore in here because all Matt would do was
sit there and like not his head like uh huh
yeah yeah. Either that or his hands will be clasped
together with this look of sheer joy on his face,
just to hear us talk. What was great? It made it.
(02:12):
It made recording that much better. In the old days.
Matt's older and more cynical. Now he doesn't care anymore
about us, right, He's true released into the forest like
a baby sloth, right, which is good. That's what you
want to do with either Matt Frederick or a baby sloth.
You don't want to keep them in captivity because sloths
don't do very well in captivity. Matt does okay in captivity,
(02:33):
he's fine, but a sloth not nearly as well as
what Matt Frederick could do it captivity. Uh. Yeah, and
you were watching just before we recorded. Everyone should know
Josh was watching the twenty eight million view YouTube video
of Kristen Bell. Uh can we call her friend of
the show. Sure? I mean she's probably not going to
(02:54):
write in to object to it, so yeah, we could.
We could call her that. She's the stuff you should know.
Listener has been over the years, as is her husband, Mr.
Deck Shepherd, who was also a movie crush guest um
and he has his own podcast to Armchair Expert. Yeah,
he's crushing it right out of the games. Those are good,
good podcast. Actually, I don't know if you listen to
this are good. So she very famously he brought her
(03:18):
a sloth on her birthday and she went on Ellen
and they showed video and it's still just one of
the great videos you can ever watch. Is It's very sweet.
She's like having a meltdown and fully fully melting down. Yeah,
like crying, like sobbing because she's so excited that there's
a sloth in her house because this is something she's
(03:39):
she's wanted to meet a sloth like for her whole
life and now she gets to. Yeah, and I watched
it again today too, because after doing this research, I
was like, wait a minute, was she holding a sloth
because that's not good? And uh, it showed a picture
and she's not. The sloth is on its little perch
and she's very respect lee next to the sloth, exactly
(04:02):
how it should be. If there's any reason that that
kept Kristen Bell from being America's Sweetheart, which I can't
think of one that that erased it right there, just
knowing how to be around a sloth when you have
meltdowns at the idea of being around a slot that's
that's some serious self control and for the benefit of
the animal, that's great stuff. Yeah, not touching the animal
(04:24):
and uh, literally offering for me to change my daughter's
diaper in her restaurant booth. Yeah, that's right, because she
said the bathroom was dirty. She's a class act. Class act. So, Charles,
you mentioned um elephants. We did an elephant episode and
that that it's similar to the to the whole sloth thing.
(04:45):
Like you see a sloth, especially if you see a
sloth in captivity at a zoo or something like that,
you're like, well, I want to carry it around like
a baby or something like that. It's a sloth. It's
one of the cutest things on the planet. But you
don't want to do that. Slouce don't really eel with
captivity very well. Although they can live way longer in captivity,
they're not necessarily happy. But I was thinking one of
(05:07):
the things, one of the reasons why people seem to
think that they are happy or would want to be
picked up is because, at least among one type of sloth,
they're always smiling. They're smiling, which makes them super cute.
They also have a mullet. That's the the three toad
Brady Puss sloth um. They have a mullet and they
(05:27):
are always smiling. But if you look, it's just the
coloring on their face that happens to resemble a smile.
They're they're they have so little muscle mass that they
don't have the capability of smiling, making their face smile.
It's just the colorings on their fur. Yeah, which is
can be very misleading to us dumb humans because they
can be scared or stress out of their mind and
(05:50):
it still looks like they are just chilling and smiling. Right. Look,
it's smiling. It loves it when I juggle it with
two bowling balls in a flaming a flaming pit fork.
Oh I could come up with. I wonder where that
was going. Have you ever seen a flaming pitchfork? Is
something only in the Simpsons. So let's get into this
(06:11):
because the cuteness is just it's cute overload. When it
comes to slows, they are ridiculously cute. Um. Their whole
vibe is just you know, right up my alley at least. Sure,
not that I'm lazy mellow and but well you know me,
(06:31):
the real me isn't super mellow, but I like to
pretend to be sure, I strive to be. You get
the sloth vibe. Yeah, it's it's an aspirational state sloftht nous. Yeah,
so I love. The very first sentence of this research
says they're highly successful, which kind of cracked me up
when I read it because I pictured slaws of course
in business suits like running a company, right, can you
(06:54):
hurry it up? I have no time for this. But
what that means is is that for a very very,
very very long time, sloths generally have flourished in the world. Yeah,
they think that they probably evolved. Um. They're part of
a group or a family or some taxonomic designation called
(07:15):
um zenn athara and zenathara um are. It's it's like
the weirdo group that's sloths and eaters umillos. Sure, depending
on whether you want to be classy or not or
sound tough, sure zen artha Okay, I'll go with that,
(07:36):
but it's sloths and eaters armadillos um. Pretty much any
odd um animal you can think of would would fall
into zen artha what what what did you say? Zan
arthur ar zen arthra. So they all kind of formed
together in isolation on what was once an island South
(07:59):
America as as long back as eighty million years ago. What, yeah,
is an island? Yeah, you know, like the whole continental
drifts and all that stuff, and it decided to make
friends with Central America. Yeah, and and higher sea levels
that kind of thing. When the sea levels got locked
up in ice or when a lot of seawater got
locked up in ice. The land bridge that is Central
(08:20):
America came along and said, hey, build some zigarattes on me.
So they are highly successful. Uh, they are very slow moving,
like everyone knows. Um, they are in Central and South America.
Still no surprise there. Um. And like you said, there
are two kinds there. The two toad, uh, caleppus. I
(08:45):
was going to coleo opus, oh, colo opus, colo opus
colia rhymes of bosephis. Okay, that's a good way to
remember it. Uh. And then the little tom Brady Puss,
which is the three toad. But it's a bit of
a miss now because the two toad has three toes
but two fingers. Right. That's how they're classified or separated
(09:07):
from one another, the two toad or the three toad. Right.
So um, And technically I read somewhere, Chuck, that they
actually don't have legs. There's a four armed creature. Is
that the designation for arms? Yeah, from what I saw,
but they really just pay attention to how many fingers
are on the four arms or the four limbs what
(09:29):
we would think of as their arms, their front arms,
but they're really all four arms. And the way that
I kept, um the two separated, so too toe is
colo Opus, three toad is Brady puss is that I
thought the Brady bunch has more kids, So the Brady
has more toes and it's been working all day. Frankly,
(09:51):
that's pretty good. That's the second pneumonic device you've dropped
in the first like ten minutes of the show. Yeah,
what do you think? You're doing? Great? Good as long
as it's working. So uh. The two toad guys and ladies,
they roam um as far as laws go, a pretty
great distance. Uh. They can forage and ranges up to
(10:12):
three and fifty acres, whereas the three toad guys they
only have a range of about thirteen acres. Uh. And
then there's the cutest of all sloth, the pygmy sloth
that are just on one one little island off the
coast of Panama, right and they're actually critically endangered as
far as later they are so cute, it's ridiculous. But like,
(10:35):
as close as the sloths are, like, there's not that
many differences besides the number of toes on their four limbs.
Um that the fact that you know one has the
smile markings. The three toad as the smile markings and
the mullet haircut. The other one looks like. Um, there's
a site called Slothville. It's a it's a conservation site
run by a woman named Lucy Cook, and um, she
(10:57):
says that the two toad slaws look a bit like
a cross between a Wookie and a pig. And I
think she absolutely nailed it with that description, right, yeah,
what does them look like? The little What was the
Christmas Special? What was Chewbacca's son? Oh? Man, if you
can remember that, Chuck, I'll buy you a case of
beer my hand. Put your phone down. I don't know.
(11:18):
I can't remember, but that's sort of what it reminded
me of Norman. I'm pretty sure it was Norman, Norman
Norman Bacare you right? I can't remember. I can't either.
I'm sure there's somebody out there. It's like you will
make beer, Josh. I only said that I was making
that offer to Chuck, so wookie to pick. That's a
(11:38):
pretty good descriptor, right. So my point is this, though, um,
as as similar as two toad sloths and three toad
sloths seem, there are some differences, but really, in the
grand scheme of things there. They seem a lot, a
lot closer than say, you know, a a dove and
a sloth agreed flaming pitchfork in a slow um. But
(12:03):
they're actually really separate. They're not even they're multiple different species.
They're not even in the same genus. And for comparison,
humans and chimps are in the same genus. Two different
types of slots aren't even in the same genus, So
there's a big distinction between the two and um. I
looked up sloth News, which is fast breaking strangely enough,
(12:25):
but they there's a study that came out recently where
they did some molecular DNA studies on sloth um sloth evolution,
and they found that they may the two toad and
the three toad slots maybe even further separated and may
have evolved independently of one another. That they may be
even more distantly related than we than we think. So
(12:46):
as similar as they seem to be, they're actually pretty different.
Although they are really similar. It's a it's a weird
fluke of evolution all around. Yeah, characteristically, I think they're
fairly similar. Um. The two toed variety are a little
bit bigger uh and hang upside down a little bit
more than the three toad variety, who you'll see those
sitting upright sometimes in trees. But I read somewhere that
(13:08):
they Slaus can spend up the of their life upside down. Yes,
it's amazing. They do everything upside down. They mate upside down,
they give birth upside down, they do almost everything that
they do upside down hanging and and did you say
it was the two toad that spend more of their
life upside down than the three to toad a little
bit more hang time, right, So that's one difference. But
(13:31):
even still, it's not like the three toad or just
averse to being upside down. I think both of them
spend so much time upside down that the part of
their hair, rather than being on their backs or their
head the top of their head like ours is um,
it's on their bellies because their upside down so much
that that's how gravity is has forced the hair to part,
just like shimp, just like an upside down shimp boy
(13:54):
ship's hair. Wow, it was something, it was something the
original butt cut. Yeah it was, wouldn't it. Yeah? So
the Brady Puss also has an extra neck vertebrae. So
if you've ever seen a sloth uh seemingly turn its
head three hundred sixty degrees, it's because they can turn
their head about two D seventy degrees and have almost
(14:16):
a three D sixty degree you know, counting their peripheral
vision range of sight. Yes, yes, but without the body
that is that is strictly from moving their head. They
actually again, they lack so much muscle mass and tissue
that they don't have the muscles to move their eyeballs
in their in their heads, so when they look around,
(14:38):
they have to move their whole head. But it has
helped out for sure, especially after a hard night on
the Saturday. But they they they the fact that they
have that extra vertebrae helps them look around more. But
it's just one more thing that makes them an extraordinarily
unusual creature because only sloths and manatees are our mammals
(15:01):
that have more than seven vertebrae. Every other mammal on
the planet has seven vertebrae, and slossa manatees are the
only two that don't. Manitees a mammal, yeah all right, yeah,
they breathe there, They just spend a lot of time
in water. They were probably some sort of like wool
for bear something that eventually took to water. Well. Speaking
of bears and water, uh, slaus are really good swimmers. Um.
(15:25):
If you look up a YouTube video of slaw swimming,
it's actually they can kind of get around, um and
are somewhat graceful in the water. They can hold their
breath for up to forty minutes, and in order to
do so, they can cut their heart rate by two
thirds and their metabolism down, which is like they already
I mean, we'll get into their metabolism later, but that's
(15:46):
saying something. If they can cut their metabolism down even
more on purpose, yeah for real, because the the sloth
metabolism is a thing to to behold in your mind.
It's like, um, yeah, we'll get to it in a
little bit, but just just know that I'm excited to
talk about sloth metabolism. Uh. And then I mentioned speaking
(16:06):
of bears, they their original predecessor back in the day
was something called a giant ground sloth or a megatherium.
And if you look at this thing, it looks sort
of like a bear. Um, its face is a little
bit different, but it kind of looks like a just
a big giant brown bear. It looked like a giant
beaver to me without the tail. I really that's I mean,
(16:30):
that's what I thought. Well, beaver without a tail is
really just a tiny bear with big teeth. I guess so,
I guess so. But they found that just from examining
its bones, they found that it could walk on um
its back legs, which makes it the largest bipedal land
mammal that ever lived, which is pretty cool. And there
was a sloth ancestor amazing, and we used to eat
(16:53):
them to chuck. We found um tool marks on some
of the bones, and they think, well, humans probably hunted
it to extinction. Tuk tuk. I guess yeah. Although we've
determined he was inn Anderthal, right right, he's been designated
officially as a neandertal. Uh. Shall we take a break.
I think it's high time. Man, all right, this is
(17:13):
our slowest episode ever and we'll be right back. So
(17:45):
before we get going on more real sloth stuff, I'm
assuming you have not seen the movie Zutopia, or have you.
I don't think no, I have a kids movie. No, No,
I haven't. There's a there's a sloth scene where that's
very very funny, and in fact, they made that a
very big part of the original movie trailer where these
(18:06):
uh animals are in a hurry to find out some
information from the d m V. And so they go
to the d m V and of course, as you know,
sort of an in joke to anyone who has ever
been at the d m B, which is notably slow,
they had a sloth that was it was completely run
by sloths, and there was just this one great scene
where they go up and try to get information from
the sloth and they really do it right, they take
(18:28):
their time, and uh, it's funny for kids and adults
are like highly recommend it is. And I mean like
it's probably fairly accurate because I slows. You know, everybody
knows they're super super slow. It's not it's not really
an overstatement or exaggeration. They genuinely are extremely slow. I
(18:50):
saw that they move on the ground, which is when
they move about the fastest aside from swimming, is something
like half a kilometer per hour at top speed, and
that they'll they'll move maybe six to eight feet up
a tree in a minute. And these things are are
made to climb trees and that's how fast, or I
(19:13):
should say that's how slow they move. Yeah, they're The
actual term sloth um dates back to the twelfth century
in Spain, or in the Spanish language at least, they
were called los petasosos, which translates to the lazies, which
is hysterical because Emily and I often call animals lazies.
(19:34):
Look at those lazies because pets are lazy. Sure, yeah,
they're not sloth lazy though, No, they're not sloth lazy.
But that literally translates into the lazies. And then when
the Spanish explorers started talking about the lazies, it was
translated into the word sloth in English in about the
I guess early seventeenth century. Yeah, yeah, because it was
(19:55):
it was a cleric I believe, who was like, oh, well,
we don't talk about lazy this, we talked about sloth
because it's a one of the seven deadly sins. Now,
it's really kind of a down word when it's used
as a as an insult, for sure, you know, but
it's like the slaws are the best. So I don't know,
I like it, I know, but at the same time,
(20:16):
it's like if somebody calls you slothful, you know that
they walked right past lazy like they saw it and said, no,
lazy is not enough. I really want to drive home
how much I disdain your laziness. Yeah, that that is
a good descriptor like if someone at work as slow
as something and you describe them as slothful instead of
just slow, right, because you're you're passing judgment on them
(20:37):
as well, like like biblical style judgment, like you're going
to hell. That's how slow you you took and getting
this TPS report to me. Uh. Two toed slaws are omnivorous,
so they can eat animals. Um, I didn't see where
they do that a lot. They mainly still eat fruits
(20:57):
and leaves and twigs and things, but they they will
eat birds sometimes in lizards. I would imagine they have
to be wounded or something because it's not like they
I mean, surely they don't hunt. They're not fast enough,
right they're Yeah, they're not snatching a bird out of
the air or something like that. They're not going after hummingbirds.
It would have to be like maybe a recently killed
(21:19):
or a an injured bird. And man, if you're an
injured bird in the tropical rainforest of Central and South America.
I'm guessing the last thing you want to see is
a hungry too toad sloth slowly coming at you, because
you know it's going to take a really long time
for it to eat you alive. There's a funny YouTube
video actually called when a Sloth Chases You. It's just
(21:44):
a sloth on the ground like set to horror music.
It's awesome. So I watched a lot of sloth videos.
There's well, there's a lot of good ones out there.
I recommend looking up sloth fight. Do you think it'd
be sad out or disturbing, But there's a bunch of
different videos and it's actually it's in the grand sloth style.
(22:05):
It's really cute when sloth's fight fight fight like they
they look like they're taking it seriously and they're all agitated.
But it's impossible for us to take the sloth fight seriously.
It's just too cute and they're just too incompetent at fighting.
Oh dear, the three toad guys, they are very much
(22:28):
more picky eaters and they eat um generally, these toxic
leaves from just a few trees and they they hang around,
like if they find a good tree that they like,
they will hang around that tree for a long long time. Yeah,
there's apparently they know that some three toad sloths will
inhabit the same tree for their whole life. It's it's rare,
(22:48):
it's unusual, but even still, I mean, their entire range
usually doesn't extend over like thirteen acres or five and
a half hectares, right, Like, it's a very small, all
limited area that a sloth, a three toed sloth in particular,
will will inhabit their whole life. Right, I think we
can talk about the metabolism now since we're eating. Yes,
(23:09):
I'm so happy, so I know what the I know
what you're affect of the show probably has to just
go ahead. There's like eid in here. So the reason
slots move so slowly is because in part they metabolize
so slowly. Like when you when you metabolize, you're converting
like food into energy, right, and you're doing all sorts
(23:32):
of stuff with that. You're moving your muscles, you're you're walking,
you're laughing, you're talking, you're recording a podcast, you're digesting food.
And slots are mammals. So they do have this metabolism
that's similar to um any other mammal metasilm metabolism. It's
just way slower and therefore it's way weaker. Like the
(23:53):
human metabolism puts out about eighty watts of energy at
any given time, sloths put out less than four watts.
It's just extraordinarily slow, and even compared to humans are
compared to other animals there same size, they they metabolize
things way more slowly. So the reason that they move
(24:13):
so slowly is because they literally don't have the energy
to move much faster. Yeah, it's it takes a whole
month to digest a meal. Um, they have to do it.
That's slow. If they would digest faster, it could poison themselves.
Because they're eating these toxic leaves. They don't have incisors,
(24:33):
so they they trim these leaves down. They smack their
little lips together and trim these leaves down. Uh. And again,
I hate to say the word cute again, but it's
pretty adorable to see a little sloth chewing on a leaf. Yeah,
but imagine you're a wounded bird and a toothless sloth
is eating you. To death. Yeah, I imagine it's not
a quick a quick death. No, you get gummed to death. Uh.
(24:58):
And I think the fact of the show probably is
this whole um, the whole farting business. Sure, we'll take
it all, right, Well, here's the deal. They eat so
slow that they don't even have gas that builds up
in their system. Uh. That is how slow they they
are digesting their food, so the gas just gets reabsorbed
(25:19):
through the intestines and into the bloodstream. Uh. And it
says here that they're the gases then, uh, respired out
of the lungs. Does that mean that they mouth for
it or does it? Yeah? I mean that's what I saw,
is that they have Yeah, they basically pass those same
gases that they normally would out of their their fannie
in the American sense um the out of their mouth
(25:43):
through breathing. Interesting. So, yeah, I guess the mouth fart
worst band name ever. Worse than Diarrhea Planet. I think
you're right, man, fits better than no, it's actually worse
than frozen poop Knife. They should do a joint tour. Yeah. Yeah,
you know that mouth fart is going to be the
(26:03):
opener always. They're never going to make it to the headline.
Are never headline, you know, And I say boys because
there's no way a girl band would be called mouth
fart there. So uh. They also have a multi chambered
stomach sort of like a cow um, which is really
interesting because that's like a third of their body weight
(26:23):
if their stomachs are full. Yeah yeah, and I mean,
like the reason why it's just so so much of
their body ways because they digest foods so slowly. They
have to have this multi chambered stomach to get as
many nutrients as they possibly can out of it. And
even still, like, it's a really terrible evolutionary strategy to
evolve as a a strictly um is it or bore
(26:49):
of us as strictly tree dwelling herbivore, Like that's that's
a really bad strategy because you have to be small
enough to exist in the tree, right, um, But at
the same time, you have to be big enough to
eat tons of leaves every day. Well, the if not,
you're because the leaves don't give you they're not very
(27:10):
energy den so you have to eat a ton of
them to get good energy. Well, the slows evolved the
different strategy, they just slowed their metabolism down, so they
can be small, but they don't have to eat that
many leaves and in fact, they can go for days
without eating. And because they digest so slowly, they only
poop about once a week. But to to the central
(27:32):
cog of this whole adaptation is having a big stomach
that can very slowly digest every possible nutrient out of
the food that they eat. Yeah, so they do. They
defecate and urinate once a week. Um, generally in the
same spot, kind of at the base of the tree.
I don't think they like to wander too far because
(27:52):
when they're on the ground they are um much more
at risk than when they're up in their tree. Um. Yeah,
because they're super slow and they're you know, they're at
risk for attack for you know whatever. Any any sort
of larger mammal could come by and have a sloth
lunch at any time, right right, In particular, the harpie
eagle is like their main predator. But also, yeah, they're
(28:14):
they're definitely vulnerable to acelots and jaguars and um virtually
any other predator in the jungle because they move so
slowly and they have such an inability to defend themselves.
But what they've what that was. Some researchers think that
the reason sloths evolved to move so slowly is because
(28:35):
it's a defense mechanism for them that rather than um
like the howler monkeys that they share the jungle with.
You know, when something comes along um and and gets
the howler monkeys agitated, the holler monkeys scream and run
around and try to escape. Right. The sloths, who may
be in the same tree as a howler monkey, um,
just stays motionless and silent, and so they camouflage in
(28:59):
with tree. So that really slow movement is actually a
defensive adaptation as well. Yeah, I think the sloths uh
defensive motto is nothing to see here. You're just like,
we're just gonna be really still. Let these monkeys take
all the attention and no one will notice this. And
that's kind of the idea. Yeah, that's exactly the idea,
(29:20):
and it works. It actually does work, and it's it's
a it's misleading I think to say, which means I
accidentally misleat everybody that's that slows have no um recourse
if they are found out. I saw at least one
video where a harpy eagle found a sloth in a
tree and lands right next to it, and the sloth
just slowly like lifts its arm up and kind of
(29:42):
swats behind it with its claw man at the harpy eagle,
and the hearty eagle look kind of puzzled, but it worked,
like the harpy eagle left it alone. So yeah, they
can ward off danger, just not that frequently. Actually, yeah,
and know they despite the fact that they move super slow,
they and they are lazy. They don't actually sleep as
(30:05):
much as you would think. Um. In captivity they will
sleep a lot longer because they have, you know, no
predators around, no jaguars, and they understand that and they're like,
all right, everything's cool. I can really dig in and
sleep some. But out in the wild they sleep, um,
you know, a little under ten hours, which is I
guess if you would have asked me beforehand, I would
I would have guessed, you know, fifteen and up first
(30:27):
sloth for sloth sleep well, they will in captivity they
sleep as much as fifteen to twenty hours a day.
But in the wild they think, like you said, you know,
they got to be on point. And they're not stinky either.
Which is another great thing, even though you definitely don't
want to slot as a pet um for reasons we'll
talk about later. They don't smell, they smell um. They
(30:48):
smell kind of like the trees they live in, which
is kind of great and another defense mechanism. Yeah. So
the reason that they smell like the trees that they
live in is because sloths move so slowly that algae
grows on them and their coats in their fur. This
with the other sort of amazing part, like I had
no idea. No, I didn't either, and I don't think
(31:08):
researchers had much of an idea about this until recently.
They knew that sloth's got covered with with green algae,
especially during the rainy season. Normally they have like a
tan or a brown colored coat, but when it gets
rainy in the tropical rainforest they live in, uh, an
algae like growth will build up on their coat, which
I mean, you try to grow some algae on you,
(31:30):
you can't do it. Even if you didn't take a shower,
you move around too much. You couldn't get any algae
to grow on you. Sloths can. And at first they thought,
ha ha, that's that's hilarious. You had another funny fact
about how slow sloths are. But as they've um, as
they've researched more deeply into it, they found that actually
the sloth coat is an amazing ecosystem in itself on
(31:54):
the sloth, and that whether it's it's it's intentional or not,
the sloth actually kind of cultivates a farm inside of
its own cult that it uses to help feed itself to. Yeah. So,
I mean I had seen pictures of these green tinted
sloths and always kind of wonder what the deal was. Um,
it helps act as camouflage, which is super helpful. And
(32:17):
I don't know, did you mentioned the groove in the
center of the hairs. Yeah, so each hair has a
little groove down the center and that's where the algae
is allowed to grow. And obviously because they're not moving fast,
you're gonna get you know, more of a chance to
grow too. But like you said, they are a little
ecosystem into themselves in that fur. Uh. They did one
study that found nine hundred and eighty beatles living on
(32:40):
a single sloth, just taking roosts in there and their
little jungle coats. Uh. And then there's this moth species.
This is crazy. Um. The sloth moth, which is another
great band name by the way, cryptosis, uh, caleppi, coloe
be color weepie. Always say just the e. It's always
(33:04):
o E. I think you're right, yeah, color Weepi, colo weepie,
colo eppie, something like that. Amato tomato, Cryptosis colaiepie dyer Uh.
And they they actually colonize exclusively in sloth fur. Right.
That's the only place you will find that type of
moth is living in the fur of a sloth. It's
(33:26):
the sloth moth. Yeah, like totally symbiotic relationship. Uh. You
know they climbed down the once a week to poop
and they they these moths lay their eggs in that poop. Um.
And yes, they can actually lay their eggs in dingle
berries sloth berries. Everyone knows what that is, right, do
we need to explain that? I don't know. I would
(33:48):
say look it up. Okay, I think that's as far
as we need to say. So the adult moths emerge
from this poop uh, and they to say mama, and
they fly up and take rest in the slots fur right,
and then they mate and reproduce and then they lay
(34:10):
eggs in the sloth poop and the circle of life continues.
But again, this type of moth you won't find anywhere
on earth except in the fur of a sloth. And
then there's also beetles in there. And so as these
things like grow and die and decay and other plant
matter and whatever is floating around in the air in
(34:30):
the rainforest all kind of combined and get stuck into
these grooves and the hair of the sloth fur it
forms this algae. And they know that there is a
relationship between the sloth moth and the algae in that
the slots that have the most moths also have the
most algae. And they figured out it's just basically this
decaying matter and they're like, Okay, this is too weird.
(34:52):
Camouflage that kind of makes sense, but the fact that
there's a moth that only lives in in the loth fir,
and the more more of those moths there are, the
more algae there is, it's just too weird. And um.
They tested this algae and they found that it's rich
in fats, and for a very long time they're like, Okay,
(35:13):
the metabolism kind of explains how a sloth could sustain itself.
It's just it burns so little energy that it it
It can live on very, very nutrient sparse leaves. But
it's still kind of a mystery. It doesn't fully make sense.
And they think they figured out that the sloth as
it's grooming itself eats this algae which is high in fats,
(35:37):
and that that supplements its diet of leaves, and that
that's really the combination of these leaves and this algae
are what keeps the sloth alive over its lifetime. And
in the meantime there urine and their feces are fertilizing
the tree that is their habitat, right where these moths
are also laying their eggs. So it's just like this
(35:59):
really you nique symbiosis going on between plant, animal, and insect. Yeah,
and everyone seems to be doing great. Yeah. And one
of the thing I was like, well, you know, how
much does that really help the sloth is pooping at
the base of the tree once a week. Does that
really help? And apparently it really does, and it's not
one of those It is slow, really, so you just
(36:20):
nailed it. So slows are so slow their poop actually
slows down the decomposition in the tree because in the rainforest,
decomposition happens so fast that the tree as actually nutrient
depleted because the de comp happened so fast, sloth poop
slows the whole process down and actually nurtures the tree
even more. Yeah, it seems like everywhere the sloth goes,
(36:42):
everyone just chills out it. Basically, the sloth dingleberries are
just little rainbows trailing out of its behind. That's what
slows have. You have to look closely, but you'll see it.
It sounds like a story my daughter would make up.
So you do share a birthday, hey, which is coming
up actually probably right around the time this is released.
(37:03):
So oh yeah, well, happy birth birthday Ruby. All right,
we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk
about sloth sex right after this. All right, Tuck, you
(37:37):
promised it. You have to deliver sloth sex blow by blow.
So here's the deal. This is where things like if
you're like, all right, the sloth is the cutest thing,
and this is all adorable, and they're just amazing. They
are all those things. But this is when you might
I just want to prepare everyone to be slightly disappointed
maybe a little bit with the next couple of segments,
(37:59):
because first of all, sloths, you want to just think
they sit around and just hug in love on each
other all the time. They're solitary creatures. They don't want
to be around even other sloths. No, but but this
is something that you can have to kind of pick
yourself back up after that devastating blow in. In a
square kilometer of rainforest, there might be something like seven
(38:23):
hundred sloths even though there, yes, they're they're very dense
neighborhoods of basically shut in weirdos. Imagine that that's a
sloth community. The most devastating thing is coming up later.
I know you know what I'm talking about. Oh yes, boy.
But the males, like, let's say two sloths did find
(38:44):
themselves in the same tree, they might get into a
little fight, but more than likely they'll just, you know,
one of them will leave and they'll go find their
own tree. And it might be a tree ten or
fifteen feet away, it sounds like, but it's their own. Um.
They look for new trees. Also, when they're searching for
a female partner, the males do and they mate very quickly.
(39:05):
It's um. It lasts just a few seconds and then
the males leave the female. They don't have anything to
do with the babies, which I looked up and I
was like, surely they have some cute name like sloth babies,
but they're just called sloth babies, which is cute. Yeah,
that's pretty cute, not bad. So you know, you know,
we were talking about fertilizing trees and everything. When they
(39:26):
come down and poop once a week, I know where
this is headed. So that was a big That was
a big mystery, Like why would you if you're a sloth,
coming down from a tree to poop uses up about
eight percent of your energy. That's a lot, and it
doesn't make any sense because it leaves you vulnerable to predation.
Some researchers say, we gotta figure it out. They're leaving
(39:46):
scent markers on the tree to signal to other sloths
come on over here. Um, I'm I'm open to to
whatever freaky stuff you want to try. Sloth friend, Yeah,
anal secretions, so he, like a male saut, will literally
just say I'm just gonna rub my anus here and
I'll meet you back there at eleven o'clock at least
(40:08):
a little rainbow trail. I guess. So the female can
also and and I heard these I looked up some
videos on the female mate mating call or whatever, because
they can also put out the call that they're ready. Um.
And it's described as a high pitched scream here in
this article, but it sounds sort of bird like, like
if I was in the jungle and I heard this,
I would think it was a bird. Yeah, it's not sexy, though,
(40:31):
it's not sexiest animal. Did you get that reference right now? No?
I didn't, but I appreciate you saying it was a
reference Beverly Hills Cop Balki, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
a little cameo on Beverly Hills Cop. He was one
of the all time greats. I never watched that TV show.
I know you didn't, And Chuck, you're missing out. Remember
(40:52):
I keep going back to that piano moving episode, and
it was just one of the greatest of physical comedy ever. Really. Yeah. Also,
and it wasn't just bouky like. Balki and cousin Larry
were really well cast their perfect foils. Seeing cousin Larry
get like his last bit of patients just break and
(41:12):
his eyes get really big because Balki did something. It
was a beautiful thing to behold. Cousin Larry, was he
the other guy, the main guy? Yeah, I see it.
I see a DVD box it in your future. Were
they actually cousins in the show? Yes? Not in real life.
I mean, I don't know the set up at all.
Is it that he has this wacky cousin from another
(41:34):
land that all of a sudden shows up on his doorstep. Yeah,
Balky Bartacamas from I can't remember. They say it a
bunch of times, but his he's like a central southern,
central European type guy, like from the Balkans or something
like Latvia or something. And he comes over to America
and he stays with his cousin Larry. I have to
(41:54):
check it out. It's funny, all the all the great
TV out that's mounting on a list. I'm like, I'll
have to check out Perfect Strangers right right exactly, it's
on my list high up. So the woman puts out
the maiden call the males. Uh. There may be competition
for uh for that lady um who is in need.
And if they do fight, they will fight upside down
(42:17):
and uh like you said, it's um a slow fight,
is I guess pretty cute as it turns out. Cut, Yeah,
it is cute. So yeah, the males will fight to
the to the hurt bruised ego, and then one of
them will leaven the mail that remains will say, okay,
give me a kiss, baby, and then they'll have um.
They'll do it like a few times, but it's really fast.
(42:40):
Apparently I didn't I have enough pride to not look
up sloth sex, but um, from what I read, it
happens very quickly. And then that's that and like like
you said earlier, the male just kind of moves along
like good luck with our children. And then the sloth
um just station period depends on whether it's a two
toad or a three toad sloth, but it's somewhere between
(43:03):
six and eleven months. And then a sloth mom will
give birth to one sloth baby and a time, no letters, Nope,
just one cute little baby. So here's where it gets devastating. Um,
they do nurse their young for a little while, but
again that takes a lot of energy to nurse a
little baby, so they only do that um for a
couple of weeks before they wean that baby onto solid food.
(43:27):
The mommy is passing along all the information that the
baby needs to know about what food is and how
to how to hang and live in trees. And they
do cling to their mom's which is super cute for
about six to eleven months, um, and then they are
off on their own. Although they do this is sort
of cute. They do share arrange with mom and apparently
(43:50):
we'll stay within uh calling distance of one another. And
this is all great, and I know I'm set set
everyone up for heartbreak. So here it goes. If a
mommy sloth is up in a tree and baby sloth
slips and falls down to the ground, mommy may just
leave baby there. Yeah that's like really hard for me
(44:12):
to accept. I know, uh, because a baby sloth is cute.
Adult sloths are cute enough, but a baby sloth is
just like I bleach, right, so to to the idea
of it just being like down there on their kid.
It was a great three months we had together, but
I'm not going to put myself in the at risk
(44:34):
of being a vulnerable vulnerable to to some sort of deal. Right. Yeah,
that's what they think is that the baby is just
not worth it to the sloth, which is really said.
I would understand that if there were sloth litters and
one of them fell off, or that they didn't bond,
but they clearly do bond during the piggyback phase of
the baby's development. So it's they think that it's just like,
(44:58):
it's just too much of a risk for this sloth
and the law says better you than me. Kids. Yeah,
this this disturbed me because I was the same as you.
I was like, if there was a litter, I get it,
or if they like they're highly successful, so you would
think that, you know, after a nine you know, up
to a year of gestation period, or if they pump
(45:19):
babies out like every month or so, it wouldn't be
a big deal. But I don't know. It just seemed
like it was worth that eight percent energy and maybe
a risk of panther uh feed being panther feed, right, So,
I mean, I guess it would if that happened, that
the baby falling happened to coincide with the mom having
to poop at the base of the tree, maybe the
(45:41):
baby has a chance. Then I'm gonna save you, because
I gotta take a dump right. Oh man, um, So
let's just go right past that because that is still
super sad for me to think about. They do live
for about uh twenty years in the wild, which is
pretty good for a mammal, especially when that slow and
that you know, seemingly defenseless. Yeah, that's the three toad Yeah,
(46:04):
the three toad The two toads live about twelve in captivity,
though they can live thirty and forty years, uh, including
our old friend Missy at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia,
who just died a couple of years ago at the
old age of forty three. For from what I understand,
she's the oldest um known sloth to to live. Look
(46:25):
at the fact that she did. She looked great aut
to the end like Phillis diller um. And the fact
that that sloths lifespans double or triple in captivity really
kind of says a lot about just how how much,
how how frequently they fall victim to predators, Like, that's
what kills sloths is it's not fighting with other slaws,
(46:48):
it's not falling from trees. They can withstand that it's
being eaten by a predator. That's how slaws typically die,
so when you take them out of that situation, they
tend to live very long. But like we were being
at the top of this episode, they're not necessarily happy.
They get very stressed out when humans handle them, and
they can actually die from stress. Um. They look happy,
(47:11):
but they would much rather be at their home in
Central and South America. Really really really really difficult to
keep alive because remember, especially with the three toad sloth,
they're real picky eaters, and they learn from their mothers
what constitutes food, and so whatever tree that their mom's
been living in, basically that specific tree growing in a
(47:34):
rainforest in in South America, that is what constitutes food
to the sloth, not anything else you could possibly come
up with, And so they'll still starve and captivity pretty
easily actually, especially if they're kept in captivity outside of
Central or South America. Yeah, so if they do. Let's
say you're a wildlife management professional and you come upon
(47:58):
a little baby sloth that has been dropped, they will
rescue that sloth if they can and try and rehabilitate it,
but the goal is to get it back into the
wild as soon as possible, not like, oh it's so cute.
We're going to keep it around for a little while.
I mean, there are clearly some in captivity, but it's
not like a common zoo animal that you will see, right.
There was one other thing that was kind of a
(48:19):
quirk of their metabolism. So their mammals, which means they're
warm blooded, but they're actually not really warm blooded because
they produce so little energy and heat through their metabolism.
They actually use the same kinds of strategies that like
snakes and lizards do, where they use the sun to
adjust their body temperature, which means that if it gets
(48:41):
too hot, they can overheat and die. If it gets
too cold, they can very easily freeze to death because
their body temperature changes with the ambient temperature. So that,
combined with the fact that their food comes from a
single tree in Central America, UM, that makes them really
difficult to keep alive and kept, which is why, like
(49:01):
you're saying, they want to rehabilitate them back into the wild.
That's the goal of it. Yeah, And while they are
doing pretty well out there as far as their um
status goes, they are of course threatened in the sense
that any animal in South America and the rainforest is
threatened because of deforestation. Uh, there's just you know the
(49:23):
sad fact all animals, even if they're doing well, are
going to be threatened if you're hacking through and and
leveling their habitat, like is what is going on pretty much? Yeah,
that's I mean, that's the biggest threat is deforestation. Although
for the pygmy sloth that lives on Escudo Island off
of the coast of Panama and nowhere else because they're
(49:46):
their habitat is so limited that any deforestation that happens
there is put them in grave danger. Um. But it's
basically cutting down the forest and then building roads through
the forest because sloths will go from tree to tree
on the ground sometimes, which means that when they encounter
a road, it's hard to get from one tree to
the other aside from on the ground, So a sloth
(50:08):
crossing the road is probably not a good gamble for
the sloth. But the more roads we build through the rainforest,
the more sloths to get hit by cars, which is
about the saddest thing you could hit by a car
with a car. Yeah, and here's uh, you know, you
always hear about um like a movie medicine man, like
the cure for cancer maybe in this one leaf in
(50:30):
the middle of a forest somewhere in a jungle. They
may not have the key to cancer in a sloth.
But the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute did collect fungi samples,
you know, the algae that grows in their fur. Uh.
And this is of the three toed sloth. And they
found that some of these samples from the sloth coat
helped fight against malaria or the parasite that causes malaria
(50:52):
and um chagas disease, which I know we've talked about.
It's another tropical parasitic disease, stop your heart, mersa, cholera
sam and ela uh. And they were also active against
human breast cancer cells. So pretty amazing, yeah, which I
mean like that's the stuff that they found in the
algae growing on sloth fur, which, yeah, that is astounding.
(51:15):
It's awesome. So we're all gonna be chewing on spots
in the future. Well yeah, don't say that. They'll be alive.
You don't have to kill him or anything. Gently suck
on their fur. Okay, okay, um, you got anything else?
I got nothing? Well, if you want to know more
about sloths, there's a whole internet out there about them,
(51:38):
although we did a pretty good job covering at Chuck
if I do say so ourselves. Um, well, since I
said Internet, that means it's time for listener man, I'm
gonna call this politics on your show. Hey, guys, love
the show. I've been listening for several years now, and
I've learned lots of good stuff. And you've also introduced
(51:59):
me to the end of the world with Josh Clark
and movie crush. Yeah, how about that? All right? Will
goes deep? Uh? And he says this recently, I was
looking through vieusing comments on the show on Apple Podcasts.
I saw a number of people making critical comments about
how you share your opinions on religion and politics too often. Um.
I am a politically conservative and religious guy, and I
(52:20):
want to encourage you to keep sharing your opinions. I
live in a smallish Midwestern town in a red state
where I grew up and spent most of my life.
Most of the people in my orbit either go to
church with me and my family or hold similar conservative views.
Your opinions serve as an important function of bringing some alternate,
alternative perspectives that sometimes challenge my opinions and encourage me
(52:42):
to reevaluate certain positions and views. Please keep interjecting your views, guys.
Too many of us automatically dismiss any opinions, and unfortunately
people who's used contrast with their own. UM. I used
to work for an administrator. He would frequently say, if
we're all thinking the same thing, then some of us
aren't thinking that sounds like something. That's a really great
(53:02):
that's a great poster. That's good. That's that's the first
album's title for Mouth Farts debut. Keep a boy, you
got the great work, and keep offering your views along
with your well research and fascinating topics, well seasoned with
witty humor and hilarious banter. Regards Will Well, that was
(53:24):
a great, very nice, very kind email, like Will saw
something probably said. These guys probably know about this, and
I want to make sure that they know it's cool.
So thanks Will, as much appreciated. UM, if you like
to join in with Will's course, we love that. I
would also be interested to hear other people who want
(53:46):
to write in and explain why we shouldn't share our
politics or views, because I'm I'm very curious to hear
the other side as well. It makes me a centriest
fairness do right. You can go to stuff you Should
Know dot com and find all of our so links there,
and you can also send us a good old fashioned email,
Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
(54:12):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode on sloths.
Everybody knows that sloths spring the absolute best out of humans,
and I suspect I'm working on a theory here that
it's because we have some evolutionary memory of some moment
where human beings were saved from extinction through the direct
(00:22):
intervention of sloths. Like I said, it's a theory and
I'm still working out the details here, but I'll keep
you posted in the meantime. Enjoy this wonderful episode on sloths.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(00:49):
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Josh t
over there. They can about the number twenty three, just
sitting there thinking about until see that's right, I forgot that. Yeah,
he's in Illuminati stuff if I remember correctly. So he's
also look look at this guy. He is so good, Chuck.
(01:10):
He knows to just sit there and keep quiet even
though he's dying inside right now, to talk about the
number twenty three. Uh if I had just pulled out
some random show from like our archive from years ago?
Could you see who the producer was? Oh? I don't know,
Let's let's give it a try. Um geez, Now I
have to think of a show that we did years ago.
(01:30):
Uh well, since we're doing an animal show today, the
only I can think of his animals elephants, Jerry that
long ago? Probably Jerry? Or how about this? Can you
name any shows that other guest producers were on off
the top of your head? Um, no, this game turns
(01:51):
so lame so fast. I feel like we we well,
Matt Frederick's too busy these days, but we can't have
Matt anymore in here because all Matt would do was
sit there and like not his head like uh huh
yeah yeah. Either that or his hands will be clasped
together with this look of sheer joy on his face,
just to hear us talk. What was great? It made it.
(02:12):
It made recording that much better. In the old days.
Matt's older and more cynical. Now he doesn't care anymore
about us, right, He's true released into the forest like
a baby sloth, right, which is good. That's what you
want to do with either Matt Frederick or a baby sloth.
You don't want to keep them in captivity because sloths
don't do very well in captivity. Matt does okay in captivity,
(02:33):
he's fine, but a sloth not nearly as well as
what Matt Frederick could do it captivity. Uh. Yeah, and
you were watching just before we recorded. Everyone should know
Josh was watching the twenty eight million view YouTube video
of Kristen Bell. Uh can we call her friend of
the show. Sure? I mean she's probably not going to
(02:54):
write in to object to it, so yeah, we could.
We could call her that. She's the stuff you should know.
Listener has been over the years, as is her husband, Mr.
Deck Shepherd, who was also a movie crush guest um
and he has his own podcast to Armchair Expert. Yeah,
he's crushing it right out of the games. Those are good,
good podcast. Actually, I don't know if you listen to
this are good. So she very famously he brought her
(03:18):
a sloth on her birthday and she went on Ellen
and they showed video and it's still just one of
the great videos you can ever watch. Is It's very sweet.
She's like having a meltdown and fully fully melting down. Yeah,
like crying, like sobbing because she's so excited that there's
a sloth in her house because this is something she's
(03:39):
she's wanted to meet a sloth like for her whole
life and now she gets to. Yeah, and I watched
it again today too, because after doing this research, I
was like, wait a minute, was she holding a sloth
because that's not good? And uh, it showed a picture
and she's not. The sloth is on its little perch
and she's very respect lee next to the sloth, exactly
(04:02):
how it should be. If there's any reason that that
kept Kristen Bell from being America's Sweetheart, which I can't
think of one that that erased it right there, just
knowing how to be around a sloth when you have
meltdowns at the idea of being around a slot that's
that's some serious self control and for the benefit of
the animal, that's great stuff. Yeah, not touching the animal
(04:24):
and uh, literally offering for me to change my daughter's
diaper in her restaurant booth. Yeah, that's right, because she
said the bathroom was dirty. She's a class act. Class act. So, Charles,
you mentioned um elephants. We did an elephant episode and
that that it's similar to the to the whole sloth thing.
(04:45):
Like you see a sloth, especially if you see a
sloth in captivity at a zoo or something like that,
you're like, well, I want to carry it around like
a baby or something like that. It's a sloth. It's
one of the cutest things on the planet. But you
don't want to do that. Slouce don't really eel with
captivity very well. Although they can live way longer in captivity,
they're not necessarily happy. But I was thinking one of
(05:07):
the things, one of the reasons why people seem to
think that they are happy or would want to be
picked up is because, at least among one type of sloth,
they're always smiling. They're smiling, which makes them super cute.
They also have a mullet. That's the the three toad
Brady Puss sloth um. They have a mullet and they
(05:27):
are always smiling. But if you look, it's just the
coloring on their face that happens to resemble a smile.
They're they're they have so little muscle mass that they
don't have the capability of smiling, making their face smile.
It's just the colorings on their fur. Yeah, which is
can be very misleading to us dumb humans because they
can be scared or stress out of their mind and
(05:50):
it still looks like they are just chilling and smiling. Right. Look,
it's smiling. It loves it when I juggle it with
two bowling balls in a flaming a flaming pit fork.
Oh I could come up with. I wonder where that
was going. Have you ever seen a flaming pitchfork? Is
something only in the Simpsons. So let's get into this
(06:11):
because the cuteness is just it's cute overload. When it
comes to slows, they are ridiculously cute. Um. Their whole
vibe is just you know, right up my alley at least. Sure,
not that I'm lazy mellow and but well you know me,
(06:31):
the real me isn't super mellow, but I like to
pretend to be sure, I strive to be. You get
the sloth vibe. Yeah, it's it's an aspirational state sloftht nous. Yeah,
so I love. The very first sentence of this research
says they're highly successful, which kind of cracked me up
when I read it because I pictured slaws of course
in business suits like running a company, right, can you
(06:54):
hurry it up? I have no time for this. But
what that means is is that for a very very,
very very long time, sloths generally have flourished in the world. Yeah,
they think that they probably evolved. Um. They're part of
a group or a family or some taxonomic designation called
(07:15):
um zenn athara and zenathara um are. It's it's like
the weirdo group that's sloths and eaters umillos. Sure, depending
on whether you want to be classy or not or
sound tough, sure zen artha Okay, I'll go with that,
(07:36):
but it's sloths and eaters armadillos um. Pretty much any
odd um animal you can think of would would fall
into zen artha what what what did you say? Zan
arthur ar zen arthra. So they all kind of formed
together in isolation on what was once an island South
(07:59):
America as as long back as eighty million years ago. What, yeah,
is an island? Yeah, you know, like the whole continental
drifts and all that stuff, and it decided to make
friends with Central America. Yeah, and and higher sea levels
that kind of thing. When the sea levels got locked
up in ice or when a lot of seawater got
locked up in ice. The land bridge that is Central
(08:20):
America came along and said, hey, build some zigarattes on me.
So they are highly successful. Uh, they are very slow moving,
like everyone knows. Um, they are in Central and South America.
Still no surprise there. Um. And like you said, there
are two kinds there. The two toad, uh, caleppus. I
(08:45):
was going to coleo opus, oh, colo opus, colo opus
colia rhymes of bosephis. Okay, that's a good way to
remember it. Uh. And then the little tom Brady Puss,
which is the three toad. But it's a bit of
a miss now because the two toad has three toes
but two fingers. Right. That's how they're classified or separated
(09:07):
from one another, the two toad or the three toad. Right.
So um, And technically I read somewhere, Chuck, that they
actually don't have legs. There's a four armed creature. Is
that the designation for arms? Yeah, from what I saw,
but they really just pay attention to how many fingers
are on the four arms or the four limbs what
(09:29):
we would think of as their arms, their front arms,
but they're really all four arms. And the way that
I kept, um the two separated, so too toe is
colo Opus, three toad is Brady puss is that I
thought the Brady bunch has more kids, So the Brady
has more toes and it's been working all day. Frankly,
(09:51):
that's pretty good. That's the second pneumonic device you've dropped
in the first like ten minutes of the show. Yeah,
what do you think? You're doing? Great? Good as long
as it's working. So uh. The two toad guys and ladies,
they roam um as far as laws go, a pretty
great distance. Uh. They can forage and ranges up to
(10:12):
three and fifty acres, whereas the three toad guys they
only have a range of about thirteen acres. Uh. And
then there's the cutest of all sloth, the pygmy sloth
that are just on one one little island off the
coast of Panama, right and they're actually critically endangered as
far as later they are so cute, it's ridiculous. But like,
(10:35):
as close as the sloths are, like, there's not that
many differences besides the number of toes on their four limbs.
Um that the fact that you know one has the
smile markings. The three toad as the smile markings and
the mullet haircut. The other one looks like. Um, there's
a site called Slothville. It's a it's a conservation site
run by a woman named Lucy Cook, and um, she
(10:57):
says that the two toad slaws look a bit like
a cross between a Wookie and a pig. And I
think she absolutely nailed it with that description, right, yeah,
what does them look like? The little What was the
Christmas Special? What was Chewbacca's son? Oh? Man, if you
can remember that, Chuck, I'll buy you a case of
beer my hand. Put your phone down. I don't know.
(11:18):
I can't remember, but that's sort of what it reminded
me of Norman. I'm pretty sure it was Norman, Norman
Norman Bacare you right? I can't remember. I can't either.
I'm sure there's somebody out there. It's like you will
make beer, Josh. I only said that I was making
that offer to Chuck, so wookie to pick. That's a
(11:38):
pretty good descriptor, right. So my point is this, though, um,
as as similar as two toad sloths and three toad
sloths seem, there are some differences, but really, in the
grand scheme of things there. They seem a lot, a
lot closer than say, you know, a a dove and
a sloth agreed flaming pitchfork in a slow um. But
(12:03):
they're actually really separate. They're not even they're multiple different species.
They're not even in the same genus. And for comparison,
humans and chimps are in the same genus. Two different
types of slots aren't even in the same genus, So
there's a big distinction between the two and um. I
looked up sloth News, which is fast breaking strangely enough,
(12:25):
but they there's a study that came out recently where
they did some molecular DNA studies on sloth um sloth evolution,
and they found that they may the two toad and
the three toad slots maybe even further separated and may
have evolved independently of one another. That they may be
even more distantly related than we than we think. So
(12:46):
as similar as they seem to be, they're actually pretty different.
Although they are really similar. It's a it's a weird
fluke of evolution all around. Yeah, characteristically, I think they're
fairly similar. Um. The two toed variety are a little
bit bigger uh and hang upside down a little bit
more than the three toad variety, who you'll see those
sitting upright sometimes in trees. But I read somewhere that
(13:08):
they Slaus can spend up the of their life upside down. Yes,
it's amazing. They do everything upside down. They mate upside down,
they give birth upside down, they do almost everything that
they do upside down hanging and and did you say
it was the two toad that spend more of their
life upside down than the three to toad a little
bit more hang time, right, So that's one difference. But
(13:31):
even still, it's not like the three toad or just
averse to being upside down. I think both of them
spend so much time upside down that the part of
their hair, rather than being on their backs or their
head the top of their head like ours is um,
it's on their bellies because their upside down so much
that that's how gravity is has forced the hair to part,
just like shimp, just like an upside down shimp boy
(13:54):
ship's hair. Wow, it was something, it was something the
original butt cut. Yeah it was, wouldn't it. Yeah? So
the Brady Puss also has an extra neck vertebrae. So
if you've ever seen a sloth uh seemingly turn its
head three hundred sixty degrees, it's because they can turn
their head about two D seventy degrees and have almost
(14:16):
a three D sixty degree you know, counting their peripheral
vision range of sight. Yes, yes, but without the body
that is that is strictly from moving their head. They
actually again, they lack so much muscle mass and tissue
that they don't have the muscles to move their eyeballs
in their in their heads, so when they look around,
(14:38):
they have to move their whole head. But it has
helped out for sure, especially after a hard night on
the Saturday. But they they they the fact that they
have that extra vertebrae helps them look around more. But
it's just one more thing that makes them an extraordinarily
unusual creature because only sloths and manatees are our mammals
(15:01):
that have more than seven vertebrae. Every other mammal on
the planet has seven vertebrae, and slossa manatees are the
only two that don't. Manitees a mammal, yeah all right, yeah,
they breathe there, They just spend a lot of time
in water. They were probably some sort of like wool
for bear something that eventually took to water. Well. Speaking
of bears and water, uh, slaus are really good swimmers. Um.
(15:25):
If you look up a YouTube video of slaw swimming,
it's actually they can kind of get around, um and
are somewhat graceful in the water. They can hold their
breath for up to forty minutes, and in order to
do so, they can cut their heart rate by two
thirds and their metabolism down, which is like they already
I mean, we'll get into their metabolism later, but that's
(15:46):
saying something. If they can cut their metabolism down even
more on purpose, yeah for real, because the the sloth
metabolism is a thing to to behold in your mind.
It's like, um, yeah, we'll get to it in a
little bit, but just just know that I'm excited to
talk about sloth metabolism. Uh. And then I mentioned speaking
(16:06):
of bears, they their original predecessor back in the day
was something called a giant ground sloth or a megatherium.
And if you look at this thing, it looks sort
of like a bear. Um, its face is a little
bit different, but it kind of looks like a just
a big giant brown bear. It looked like a giant
beaver to me without the tail. I really that's I mean,
(16:30):
that's what I thought. Well, beaver without a tail is
really just a tiny bear with big teeth. I guess so,
I guess so. But they found that just from examining
its bones, they found that it could walk on um
its back legs, which makes it the largest bipedal land
mammal that ever lived, which is pretty cool. And there
was a sloth ancestor amazing, and we used to eat
(16:53):
them to chuck. We found um tool marks on some
of the bones, and they think, well, humans probably hunted
it to extinction. Tuk tuk. I guess yeah. Although we've
determined he was inn Anderthal, right right, he's been designated
officially as a neandertal. Uh. Shall we take a break.
I think it's high time. Man, all right, this is
(17:13):
our slowest episode ever and we'll be right back. So
(17:45):
before we get going on more real sloth stuff, I'm
assuming you have not seen the movie Zutopia, or have you.
I don't think no, I have a kids movie. No, No,
I haven't. There's a there's a sloth scene where that's
very very funny, and in fact, they made that a
very big part of the original movie trailer where these
(18:06):
uh animals are in a hurry to find out some
information from the d m V. And so they go
to the d m V and of course, as you know,
sort of an in joke to anyone who has ever
been at the d m B, which is notably slow,
they had a sloth that was it was completely run
by sloths, and there was just this one great scene
where they go up and try to get information from
the sloth and they really do it right, they take
(18:28):
their time, and uh, it's funny for kids and adults
are like highly recommend it is. And I mean like
it's probably fairly accurate because I slows. You know, everybody
knows they're super super slow. It's not it's not really
an overstatement or exaggeration. They genuinely are extremely slow. I
(18:50):
saw that they move on the ground, which is when
they move about the fastest aside from swimming, is something
like half a kilometer per hour at top speed, and
that they'll they'll move maybe six to eight feet up
a tree in a minute. And these things are are
made to climb trees and that's how fast, or I
(19:13):
should say that's how slow they move. Yeah, they're The
actual term sloth um dates back to the twelfth century
in Spain, or in the Spanish language at least, they
were called los petasosos, which translates to the lazies, which
is hysterical because Emily and I often call animals lazies.
(19:34):
Look at those lazies because pets are lazy. Sure, yeah,
they're not sloth lazy though, No, they're not sloth lazy.
But that literally translates into the lazies. And then when
the Spanish explorers started talking about the lazies, it was
translated into the word sloth in English in about the
I guess early seventeenth century. Yeah, yeah, because it was
(19:55):
it was a cleric I believe, who was like, oh, well,
we don't talk about lazy this, we talked about sloth
because it's a one of the seven deadly sins. Now,
it's really kind of a down word when it's used
as a as an insult, for sure, you know, but
it's like the slaws are the best. So I don't know,
I like it, I know, but at the same time,
(20:16):
it's like if somebody calls you slothful, you know that
they walked right past lazy like they saw it and said, no,
lazy is not enough. I really want to drive home
how much I disdain your laziness. Yeah, that that is
a good descriptor like if someone at work as slow
as something and you describe them as slothful instead of
just slow, right, because you're you're passing judgment on them
(20:37):
as well, like like biblical style judgment, like you're going
to hell. That's how slow you you took and getting
this TPS report to me. Uh. Two toed slaws are omnivorous,
so they can eat animals. Um, I didn't see where
they do that a lot. They mainly still eat fruits
(20:57):
and leaves and twigs and things, but they they will
eat birds sometimes in lizards. I would imagine they have
to be wounded or something because it's not like they
I mean, surely they don't hunt. They're not fast enough,
right they're Yeah, they're not snatching a bird out of
the air or something like that. They're not going after hummingbirds.
It would have to be like maybe a recently killed
(21:19):
or a an injured bird. And man, if you're an
injured bird in the tropical rainforest of Central and South America.
I'm guessing the last thing you want to see is
a hungry too toad sloth slowly coming at you, because
you know it's going to take a really long time
for it to eat you alive. There's a funny YouTube
video actually called when a Sloth Chases You. It's just
(21:44):
a sloth on the ground like set to horror music.
It's awesome. So I watched a lot of sloth videos.
There's well, there's a lot of good ones out there.
I recommend looking up sloth fight. Do you think it'd
be sad out or disturbing, But there's a bunch of
different videos and it's actually it's in the grand sloth style.
(22:05):
It's really cute when sloth's fight fight fight like they
they look like they're taking it seriously and they're all agitated.
But it's impossible for us to take the sloth fight seriously.
It's just too cute and they're just too incompetent at fighting.
Oh dear, the three toad guys, they are very much
(22:28):
more picky eaters and they eat um generally, these toxic
leaves from just a few trees and they they hang around,
like if they find a good tree that they like,
they will hang around that tree for a long long time. Yeah,
there's apparently they know that some three toad sloths will
inhabit the same tree for their whole life. It's it's rare,
(22:48):
it's unusual, but even still, I mean, their entire range
usually doesn't extend over like thirteen acres or five and
a half hectares, right, Like, it's a very small, all
limited area that a sloth, a three toed sloth in particular,
will will inhabit their whole life. Right, I think we
can talk about the metabolism now since we're eating. Yes,
(23:09):
I'm so happy, so I know what the I know
what you're affect of the show probably has to just
go ahead. There's like eid in here. So the reason
slots move so slowly is because in part they metabolize
so slowly. Like when you when you metabolize, you're converting
like food into energy, right, and you're doing all sorts
(23:32):
of stuff with that. You're moving your muscles, you're you're walking,
you're laughing, you're talking, you're recording a podcast, you're digesting food.
And slots are mammals. So they do have this metabolism
that's similar to um any other mammal metasilm metabolism. It's
just way slower and therefore it's way weaker. Like the
(23:53):
human metabolism puts out about eighty watts of energy at
any given time, sloths put out less than four watts.
It's just extraordinarily slow, and even compared to humans are
compared to other animals there same size, they they metabolize
things way more slowly. So the reason that they move
(24:13):
so slowly is because they literally don't have the energy
to move much faster. Yeah, it's it takes a whole
month to digest a meal. Um, they have to do it.
That's slow. If they would digest faster, it could poison themselves.
Because they're eating these toxic leaves. They don't have incisors,
(24:33):
so they they trim these leaves down. They smack their
little lips together and trim these leaves down. Uh. And again,
I hate to say the word cute again, but it's
pretty adorable to see a little sloth chewing on a leaf. Yeah,
but imagine you're a wounded bird and a toothless sloth
is eating you. To death. Yeah, I imagine it's not
a quick a quick death. No, you get gummed to death. Uh.
(24:58):
And I think the fact of the show probably is
this whole um, the whole farting business. Sure, we'll take
it all, right, Well, here's the deal. They eat so
slow that they don't even have gas that builds up
in their system. Uh. That is how slow they they
are digesting their food, so the gas just gets reabsorbed
(25:19):
through the intestines and into the bloodstream. Uh. And it
says here that they're the gases then, uh, respired out
of the lungs. Does that mean that they mouth for
it or does it? Yeah? I mean that's what I saw,
is that they have Yeah, they basically pass those same
gases that they normally would out of their their fannie
in the American sense um the out of their mouth
(25:43):
through breathing. Interesting. So, yeah, I guess the mouth fart
worst band name ever. Worse than Diarrhea Planet. I think
you're right, man, fits better than no, it's actually worse
than frozen poop Knife. They should do a joint tour. Yeah. Yeah,
you know that mouth fart is going to be the
(26:03):
opener always. They're never going to make it to the headline.
Are never headline, you know, And I say boys because
there's no way a girl band would be called mouth
fart there. So uh. They also have a multi chambered
stomach sort of like a cow um, which is really
interesting because that's like a third of their body weight
(26:23):
if their stomachs are full. Yeah yeah, and I mean,
like the reason why it's just so so much of
their body ways because they digest foods so slowly. They
have to have this multi chambered stomach to get as
many nutrients as they possibly can out of it. And
even still, like, it's a really terrible evolutionary strategy to
evolve as a a strictly um is it or bore
(26:49):
of us as strictly tree dwelling herbivore, Like that's that's
a really bad strategy because you have to be small
enough to exist in the tree, right, um, But at
the same time, you have to be big enough to
eat tons of leaves every day. Well, the if not,
you're because the leaves don't give you they're not very
(27:10):
energy den so you have to eat a ton of
them to get good energy. Well, the slows evolved the
different strategy, they just slowed their metabolism down, so they
can be small, but they don't have to eat that
many leaves and in fact, they can go for days
without eating. And because they digest so slowly, they only
poop about once a week. But to to the central
(27:32):
cog of this whole adaptation is having a big stomach
that can very slowly digest every possible nutrient out of
the food that they eat. Yeah, so they do. They
defecate and urinate once a week. Um, generally in the
same spot, kind of at the base of the tree.
I don't think they like to wander too far because
(27:52):
when they're on the ground they are um much more
at risk than when they're up in their tree. Um. Yeah,
because they're super slow and they're you know, they're at
risk for attack for you know whatever. Any any sort
of larger mammal could come by and have a sloth
lunch at any time, right right, In particular, the harpie
eagle is like their main predator. But also, yeah, they're
(28:14):
they're definitely vulnerable to acelots and jaguars and um virtually
any other predator in the jungle because they move so
slowly and they have such an inability to defend themselves.
But what they've what that was. Some researchers think that
the reason sloths evolved to move so slowly is because
(28:35):
it's a defense mechanism for them that rather than um
like the howler monkeys that they share the jungle with.
You know, when something comes along um and and gets
the howler monkeys agitated, the holler monkeys scream and run
around and try to escape. Right. The sloths, who may
be in the same tree as a howler monkey, um,
just stays motionless and silent, and so they camouflage in
(28:59):
with tree. So that really slow movement is actually a
defensive adaptation as well. Yeah, I think the sloths uh
defensive motto is nothing to see here. You're just like,
we're just gonna be really still. Let these monkeys take
all the attention and no one will notice this. And
that's kind of the idea. Yeah, that's exactly the idea,
(29:20):
and it works. It actually does work, and it's it's
a it's misleading I think to say, which means I
accidentally misleat everybody that's that slows have no um recourse
if they are found out. I saw at least one
video where a harpy eagle found a sloth in a
tree and lands right next to it, and the sloth
just slowly like lifts its arm up and kind of
(29:42):
swats behind it with its claw man at the harpy eagle,
and the hearty eagle look kind of puzzled, but it worked,
like the harpy eagle left it alone. So yeah, they
can ward off danger, just not that frequently. Actually, yeah,
and know they despite the fact that they move super slow,
they and they are lazy. They don't actually sleep as
(30:05):
much as you would think. Um. In captivity they will
sleep a lot longer because they have, you know, no
predators around, no jaguars, and they understand that and they're like,
all right, everything's cool. I can really dig in and
sleep some. But out in the wild they sleep, um,
you know, a little under ten hours, which is I
guess if you would have asked me beforehand, I would
I would have guessed, you know, fifteen and up first
(30:27):
sloth for sloth sleep well, they will in captivity they
sleep as much as fifteen to twenty hours a day.
But in the wild they think, like you said, you know,
they got to be on point. And they're not stinky either.
Which is another great thing, even though you definitely don't
want to slot as a pet um for reasons we'll
talk about later. They don't smell, they smell um. They
(30:48):
smell kind of like the trees they live in, which
is kind of great and another defense mechanism. Yeah. So
the reason that they smell like the trees that they
live in is because sloths move so slowly that algae
grows on them and their coats in their fur. This
with the other sort of amazing part, like I had
no idea. No, I didn't either, and I don't think
(31:08):
researchers had much of an idea about this until recently.
They knew that sloth's got covered with with green algae,
especially during the rainy season. Normally they have like a
tan or a brown colored coat, but when it gets
rainy in the tropical rainforest they live in, uh, an
algae like growth will build up on their coat, which
I mean, you try to grow some algae on you,
(31:30):
you can't do it. Even if you didn't take a shower,
you move around too much. You couldn't get any algae
to grow on you. Sloths can. And at first they thought,
ha ha, that's that's hilarious. You had another funny fact
about how slow sloths are. But as they've um, as
they've researched more deeply into it, they found that actually
the sloth coat is an amazing ecosystem in itself on
(31:54):
the sloth, and that whether it's it's it's intentional or not,
the sloth actually kind of cultivates a farm inside of
its own cult that it uses to help feed itself to. Yeah. So,
I mean I had seen pictures of these green tinted
sloths and always kind of wonder what the deal was. Um,
it helps act as camouflage, which is super helpful. And
(32:17):
I don't know, did you mentioned the groove in the
center of the hairs. Yeah, so each hair has a
little groove down the center and that's where the algae
is allowed to grow. And obviously because they're not moving fast,
you're gonna get you know, more of a chance to
grow too. But like you said, they are a little
ecosystem into themselves in that fur. Uh. They did one
study that found nine hundred and eighty beatles living on
(32:40):
a single sloth, just taking roosts in there and their
little jungle coats. Uh. And then there's this moth species.
This is crazy. Um. The sloth moth, which is another
great band name by the way, cryptosis, uh, caleppi, coloe
be color weepie. Always say just the e. It's always
(33:04):
o E. I think you're right, yeah, color Weepi, colo weepie,
colo eppie, something like that. Amato tomato, Cryptosis colaiepie dyer Uh.
And they they actually colonize exclusively in sloth fur. Right.
That's the only place you will find that type of
moth is living in the fur of a sloth. It's
(33:26):
the sloth moth. Yeah, like totally symbiotic relationship. Uh. You
know they climbed down the once a week to poop
and they they these moths lay their eggs in that poop. Um.
And yes, they can actually lay their eggs in dingle
berries sloth berries. Everyone knows what that is, right, do
we need to explain that? I don't know. I would
(33:48):
say look it up. Okay, I think that's as far
as we need to say. So the adult moths emerge
from this poop uh, and they to say mama, and
they fly up and take rest in the slots fur right,
and then they mate and reproduce and then they lay
(34:10):
eggs in the sloth poop and the circle of life continues.
But again, this type of moth you won't find anywhere
on earth except in the fur of a sloth. And
then there's also beetles in there. And so as these
things like grow and die and decay and other plant
matter and whatever is floating around in the air in
(34:30):
the rainforest all kind of combined and get stuck into
these grooves and the hair of the sloth fur it
forms this algae. And they know that there is a
relationship between the sloth moth and the algae in that
the slots that have the most moths also have the
most algae. And they figured out it's just basically this
decaying matter and they're like, Okay, this is too weird.
(34:52):
Camouflage that kind of makes sense, but the fact that
there's a moth that only lives in in the loth fir,
and the more more of those moths there are, the
more algae there is, it's just too weird. And um.
They tested this algae and they found that it's rich
in fats, and for a very long time they're like, Okay,
(35:13):
the metabolism kind of explains how a sloth could sustain itself.
It's just it burns so little energy that it it
It can live on very, very nutrient sparse leaves. But
it's still kind of a mystery. It doesn't fully make sense.
And they think they figured out that the sloth as
it's grooming itself eats this algae which is high in fats,
(35:37):
and that that supplements its diet of leaves, and that
that's really the combination of these leaves and this algae
are what keeps the sloth alive over its lifetime. And
in the meantime there urine and their feces are fertilizing
the tree that is their habitat, right where these moths
are also laying their eggs. So it's just like this
(35:59):
really you nique symbiosis going on between plant, animal, and insect. Yeah,
and everyone seems to be doing great. Yeah. And one
of the thing I was like, well, you know, how
much does that really help the sloth is pooping at
the base of the tree once a week. Does that
really help? And apparently it really does, and it's not
one of those It is slow, really, so you just
(36:20):
nailed it. So slows are so slow their poop actually
slows down the decomposition in the tree because in the rainforest,
decomposition happens so fast that the tree as actually nutrient
depleted because the de comp happened so fast, sloth poop
slows the whole process down and actually nurtures the tree
even more. Yeah, it seems like everywhere the sloth goes,
(36:42):
everyone just chills out it. Basically, the sloth dingleberries are
just little rainbows trailing out of its behind. That's what
slows have. You have to look closely, but you'll see it.
It sounds like a story my daughter would make up.
So you do share a birthday, hey, which is coming
up actually probably right around the time this is released.
(37:03):
So oh yeah, well, happy birth birthday Ruby. All right,
we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk
about sloth sex right after this. All right, Tuck, you
(37:37):
promised it. You have to deliver sloth sex blow by blow.
So here's the deal. This is where things like if
you're like, all right, the sloth is the cutest thing,
and this is all adorable, and they're just amazing. They
are all those things. But this is when you might
I just want to prepare everyone to be slightly disappointed
maybe a little bit with the next couple of segments,
(37:59):
because first of all, sloths, you want to just think
they sit around and just hug in love on each
other all the time. They're solitary creatures. They don't want
to be around even other sloths. No, but but this
is something that you can have to kind of pick
yourself back up after that devastating blow in. In a
square kilometer of rainforest, there might be something like seven
(38:23):
hundred sloths even though there, yes, they're they're very dense
neighborhoods of basically shut in weirdos. Imagine that that's a
sloth community. The most devastating thing is coming up later.
I know you know what I'm talking about. Oh yes, boy.
But the males, like, let's say two sloths did find
(38:44):
themselves in the same tree, they might get into a
little fight, but more than likely they'll just, you know,
one of them will leave and they'll go find their
own tree. And it might be a tree ten or
fifteen feet away, it sounds like, but it's their own. Um.
They look for new trees. Also, when they're searching for
a female partner, the males do and they mate very quickly.
(39:05):
It's um. It lasts just a few seconds and then
the males leave the female. They don't have anything to
do with the babies, which I looked up and I
was like, surely they have some cute name like sloth babies,
but they're just called sloth babies, which is cute. Yeah,
that's pretty cute, not bad. So you know, you know,
we were talking about fertilizing trees and everything. When they
(39:26):
come down and poop once a week, I know where
this is headed. So that was a big That was
a big mystery, Like why would you if you're a sloth,
coming down from a tree to poop uses up about
eight percent of your energy. That's a lot, and it
doesn't make any sense because it leaves you vulnerable to predation.
Some researchers say, we gotta figure it out. They're leaving
(39:46):
scent markers on the tree to signal to other sloths
come on over here. Um, I'm I'm open to to
whatever freaky stuff you want to try. Sloth friend, Yeah,
anal secretions, so he, like a male saut, will literally
just say I'm just gonna rub my anus here and
I'll meet you back there at eleven o'clock at least
(40:08):
a little rainbow trail. I guess. So the female can
also and and I heard these I looked up some
videos on the female mate mating call or whatever, because
they can also put out the call that they're ready. Um.
And it's described as a high pitched scream here in
this article, but it sounds sort of bird like, like
if I was in the jungle and I heard this,
I would think it was a bird. Yeah, it's not sexy, though,
(40:31):
it's not sexiest animal. Did you get that reference right now? No?
I didn't, but I appreciate you saying it was a
reference Beverly Hills Cop Balki, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
a little cameo on Beverly Hills Cop. He was one
of the all time greats. I never watched that TV show.
I know you didn't, And Chuck, you're missing out. Remember
(40:52):
I keep going back to that piano moving episode, and
it was just one of the greatest of physical comedy ever. Really. Yeah. Also,
and it wasn't just bouky like. Balki and cousin Larry
were really well cast their perfect foils. Seeing cousin Larry
get like his last bit of patients just break and
(41:12):
his eyes get really big because Balki did something. It
was a beautiful thing to behold. Cousin Larry, was he
the other guy, the main guy? Yeah, I see it.
I see a DVD box it in your future. Were
they actually cousins in the show? Yes? Not in real life.
I mean, I don't know the set up at all.
Is it that he has this wacky cousin from another
(41:34):
land that all of a sudden shows up on his doorstep. Yeah,
Balky Bartacamas from I can't remember. They say it a
bunch of times, but his he's like a central southern,
central European type guy, like from the Balkans or something
like Latvia or something. And he comes over to America
and he stays with his cousin Larry. I have to
(41:54):
check it out. It's funny, all the all the great
TV out that's mounting on a list. I'm like, I'll
have to check out Perfect Strangers right right exactly, it's
on my list high up. So the woman puts out
the maiden call the males. Uh. There may be competition
for uh for that lady um who is in need.
And if they do fight, they will fight upside down
(42:17):
and uh like you said, it's um a slow fight,
is I guess pretty cute as it turns out. Cut, Yeah,
it is cute. So yeah, the males will fight to
the to the hurt bruised ego, and then one of
them will leaven the mail that remains will say, okay,
give me a kiss, baby, and then they'll have um.
They'll do it like a few times, but it's really fast.
(42:40):
Apparently I didn't I have enough pride to not look
up sloth sex, but um, from what I read, it
happens very quickly. And then that's that and like like
you said earlier, the male just kind of moves along
like good luck with our children. And then the sloth
um just station period depends on whether it's a two
toad or a three toad sloth, but it's somewhere between
(43:03):
six and eleven months. And then a sloth mom will
give birth to one sloth baby and a time, no letters, Nope,
just one cute little baby. So here's where it gets devastating. Um,
they do nurse their young for a little while, but
again that takes a lot of energy to nurse a
little baby, so they only do that um for a
couple of weeks before they wean that baby onto solid food.
(43:27):
The mommy is passing along all the information that the
baby needs to know about what food is and how
to how to hang and live in trees. And they
do cling to their mom's which is super cute for
about six to eleven months, um, and then they are
off on their own. Although they do this is sort
of cute. They do share arrange with mom and apparently
(43:50):
we'll stay within uh calling distance of one another. And
this is all great, and I know I'm set set
everyone up for heartbreak. So here it goes. If a
mommy sloth is up in a tree and baby sloth
slips and falls down to the ground, mommy may just
leave baby there. Yeah that's like really hard for me
(44:12):
to accept. I know, uh, because a baby sloth is cute.
Adult sloths are cute enough, but a baby sloth is
just like I bleach, right, so to to the idea
of it just being like down there on their kid.
It was a great three months we had together, but
I'm not going to put myself in the at risk
(44:34):
of being a vulnerable vulnerable to to some sort of deal. Right. Yeah,
that's what they think is that the baby is just
not worth it to the sloth, which is really said.
I would understand that if there were sloth litters and
one of them fell off, or that they didn't bond,
but they clearly do bond during the piggyback phase of
the baby's development. So it's they think that it's just like,
(44:58):
it's just too much of a risk for this sloth
and the law says better you than me. Kids. Yeah,
this this disturbed me because I was the same as you.
I was like, if there was a litter, I get it,
or if they like they're highly successful, so you would
think that, you know, after a nine you know, up
to a year of gestation period, or if they pump
(45:19):
babies out like every month or so, it wouldn't be
a big deal. But I don't know. It just seemed
like it was worth that eight percent energy and maybe
a risk of panther uh feed being panther feed, right, So,
I mean, I guess it would if that happened, that
the baby falling happened to coincide with the mom having
to poop at the base of the tree, maybe the
(45:41):
baby has a chance. Then I'm gonna save you, because
I gotta take a dump right. Oh man, um, So
let's just go right past that because that is still
super sad for me to think about. They do live
for about uh twenty years in the wild, which is
pretty good for a mammal, especially when that slow and
that you know, seemingly defenseless. Yeah, that's the three toad Yeah,
(46:04):
the three toad The two toads live about twelve in captivity,
though they can live thirty and forty years, uh, including
our old friend Missy at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia,
who just died a couple of years ago at the
old age of forty three. For from what I understand,
she's the oldest um known sloth to to live. Look
(46:25):
at the fact that she did. She looked great aut
to the end like Phillis diller um. And the fact
that that sloths lifespans double or triple in captivity really
kind of says a lot about just how how much,
how how frequently they fall victim to predators, Like, that's
what kills sloths is it's not fighting with other slaws,
(46:48):
it's not falling from trees. They can withstand that it's
being eaten by a predator. That's how slaws typically die,
so when you take them out of that situation, they
tend to live very long. But like we were being
at the top of this episode, they're not necessarily happy.
They get very stressed out when humans handle them, and
they can actually die from stress. Um. They look happy,
(47:11):
but they would much rather be at their home in
Central and South America. Really really really really difficult to
keep alive because remember, especially with the three toad sloth,
they're real picky eaters, and they learn from their mothers
what constitutes food, and so whatever tree that their mom's
been living in, basically that specific tree growing in a
(47:34):
rainforest in in South America, that is what constitutes food
to the sloth, not anything else you could possibly come
up with, And so they'll still starve and captivity pretty
easily actually, especially if they're kept in captivity outside of
Central or South America. Yeah, so if they do. Let's
say you're a wildlife management professional and you come upon
(47:58):
a little baby sloth that has been dropped, they will
rescue that sloth if they can and try and rehabilitate it,
but the goal is to get it back into the
wild as soon as possible, not like, oh it's so cute.
We're going to keep it around for a little while.
I mean, there are clearly some in captivity, but it's
not like a common zoo animal that you will see, right.
There was one other thing that was kind of a
(48:19):
quirk of their metabolism. So their mammals, which means they're
warm blooded, but they're actually not really warm blooded because
they produce so little energy and heat through their metabolism.
They actually use the same kinds of strategies that like
snakes and lizards do, where they use the sun to
adjust their body temperature, which means that if it gets
(48:41):
too hot, they can overheat and die. If it gets
too cold, they can very easily freeze to death because
their body temperature changes with the ambient temperature. So that,
combined with the fact that their food comes from a
single tree in Central America, UM, that makes them really
difficult to keep alive and kept, which is why, like
(49:01):
you're saying, they want to rehabilitate them back into the wild.
That's the goal of it. Yeah, And while they are
doing pretty well out there as far as their um
status goes, they are of course threatened in the sense
that any animal in South America and the rainforest is
threatened because of deforestation. Uh, there's just you know the
(49:23):
sad fact all animals, even if they're doing well, are
going to be threatened if you're hacking through and and
leveling their habitat, like is what is going on pretty much? Yeah,
that's I mean, that's the biggest threat is deforestation. Although
for the pygmy sloth that lives on Escudo Island off
of the coast of Panama and nowhere else because they're
(49:46):
their habitat is so limited that any deforestation that happens
there is put them in grave danger. Um. But it's
basically cutting down the forest and then building roads through
the forest because sloths will go from tree to tree
on the ground sometimes, which means that when they encounter
a road, it's hard to get from one tree to
the other aside from on the ground, So a sloth
(50:08):
crossing the road is probably not a good gamble for
the sloth. But the more roads we build through the rainforest,
the more sloths to get hit by cars, which is
about the saddest thing you could hit by a car
with a car. Yeah, and here's uh, you know, you
always hear about um like a movie medicine man, like
the cure for cancer maybe in this one leaf in
(50:30):
the middle of a forest somewhere in a jungle. They
may not have the key to cancer in a sloth.
But the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute did collect fungi samples,
you know, the algae that grows in their fur. Uh.
And this is of the three toed sloth. And they
found that some of these samples from the sloth coat
helped fight against malaria or the parasite that causes malaria
(50:52):
and um chagas disease, which I know we've talked about.
It's another tropical parasitic disease, stop your heart, mersa, cholera
sam and ela uh. And they were also active against
human breast cancer cells. So pretty amazing, yeah, which I
mean like that's the stuff that they found in the
algae growing on sloth fur, which, yeah, that is astounding.
(51:15):
It's awesome. So we're all gonna be chewing on spots
in the future. Well yeah, don't say that. They'll be alive.
You don't have to kill him or anything. Gently suck
on their fur. Okay, okay, um, you got anything else?
I got nothing? Well, if you want to know more
about sloths, there's a whole internet out there about them,
(51:38):
although we did a pretty good job covering at Chuck
if I do say so ourselves. Um, well, since I
said Internet, that means it's time for listener man, I'm
gonna call this politics on your show. Hey, guys, love
the show. I've been listening for several years now, and
I've learned lots of good stuff. And you've also introduced
(51:59):
me to the end of the world with Josh Clark
and movie crush. Yeah, how about that? All right? Will
goes deep? Uh? And he says this recently, I was
looking through vieusing comments on the show on Apple Podcasts.
I saw a number of people making critical comments about
how you share your opinions on religion and politics too often. Um.
I am a politically conservative and religious guy, and I
(52:20):
want to encourage you to keep sharing your opinions. I
live in a smallish Midwestern town in a red state
where I grew up and spent most of my life.
Most of the people in my orbit either go to
church with me and my family or hold similar conservative views.
Your opinions serve as an important function of bringing some alternate,
alternative perspectives that sometimes challenge my opinions and encourage me
(52:42):
to reevaluate certain positions and views. Please keep interjecting your views, guys.
Too many of us automatically dismiss any opinions, and unfortunately
people who's used contrast with their own. UM. I used
to work for an administrator. He would frequently say, if
we're all thinking the same thing, then some of us
aren't thinking that sounds like something. That's a really great
(53:02):
that's a great poster. That's good. That's that's the first
album's title for Mouth Farts debut. Keep a boy, you
got the great work, and keep offering your views along
with your well research and fascinating topics, well seasoned with
witty humor and hilarious banter. Regards Will Well, that was
(53:24):
a great, very nice, very kind email, like Will saw
something probably said. These guys probably know about this, and
I want to make sure that they know it's cool.
So thanks Will, as much appreciated. UM, if you like
to join in with Will's course, we love that. I
would also be interested to hear other people who want
(53:46):
to write in and explain why we shouldn't share our
politics or views, because I'm I'm very curious to hear
the other side as well. It makes me a centriest
fairness do right. You can go to stuff you Should
Know dot com and find all of our so links there,
and you can also send us a good old fashioned email,
Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
(54:12):
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