Giant Ground Sloth & Tree Sloth

Giant Ground Sloth

The Giant Ground Sloth was an enormous slow moving herbivore of the past. .  A few years ago they found the bones of one in South America that was 18 feet (5.5 meters) tall.  If you have watched what I considered fun movies in the "Ice Age" series you will remember Sid.  Since Sid is supposed to be a ground sloth he SHOULD hae been enormous...not the size of a 4th grade human.  In fact, he would have been nearly as big as Manny the woolly mammoth.   Poor Diego the saber tooth cat would have not weighed as much as one of Sid's arms.  What's more, giant ground sloth have huge claws for defense.  There are 3 claws on each hand and they are up to 10 inches long.  The Genus is Megatherium.  Only a few species of mammoth were bigger animals at that time of Earth history.  The Giant Ground Sloths appear to have lived in South America.  Their bones have been found in many parts of South America.  I did not say "fossilized bones" because these are more recent animals.  Early man may have hunted them.  They went extinct only about 10,000 years ago.  Because they are more modern or recent than extinct animals like dinosaus, sloth bones have not had time to mineralize or fossilize.

Three Toed Tree Sloth

Tree sloths are relatives to the Giant Ground Sloths.  As you surely already know, tree sloths are small, only about the size of a small  dog.  They are only about 18 inches or 45 cm long.  They weigh about 8-10 lbs or 3.5-4.5 kg.   This drawing is of the three toed sloth.  The modern sloth moves so slowly that algae grows in its fur.  They sometimes look rather green.  This may be excellent camouflage since they spend the great majority of their lives in the trees of the Central or South American rain forest.  Sloths are primarily herbivores but they are know to also eat insects so technically they are omnivores.  They will eat leaves from over 50 species of South American or Central American trees.  They move rather slowly but they can change trees up to 4 times in one day.