Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bam here. Sloths are known for their incredibly
Speaker 1: slow moving natures, but it turns out that such sluggishness
Speaker 1: also carries over into their bathroom habits, so much so
Speaker 1: that they only defecate every five to seven days on average,
Speaker 1: and actually lose up to one third of their body
Speaker 1: weight in a single movement. The stool is pushed out
Speaker 1: and one fell swoop so impressive that horrified and or
Speaker 1: transfixed bystanders can watch the animals abdomen shrink. We spoke
Speaker 1: via email with Sarah Kennedy, co founder of the Sloth
Speaker 1: Conservation Foundation based in the United Kingdom. She said, if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a sloth pooh, you could only ever
Speaker 1: describe it as pure bliss. They tip their heads back
Speaker 1: and smile. But the week long delay between bowel movements
Speaker 1: is not even the strangest thing about sloth pooping habits.
Speaker 1: You see. Sloughs are arboreal creatures, which means they live, work,
Speaker 1: and play high up in the trees. They're chosen habitats
Speaker 1: are the rain and cloud forests of Central and South America.
Speaker 1: Most other arboreal animals like monkeys poop from the trees,
Speaker 1: but not sloths. Instead, they make a slow descent from
Speaker 1: the canopy to do their business at the base of
Speaker 1: the trees, and this despite the fact that it's quite perilous.
Speaker 1: Kennedy said, this behavior puts them threat to a lot
Speaker 1: of predators like jungle cats, and wastes a lot of
Speaker 1: their precious energy, which they don't have much of. It
Speaker 1: turns out that more than half of all sloth deaths
Speaker 1: occur during potty time, when these creatures are so vulnerable
Speaker 1: to predators. The process comes at a serious price. Zoologist
Speaker 1: and Sloth Conservation Foundation founder Becky Cliff wrote in a
Speaker 1: blog post a slot's entire lifestyle is based around avoiding
Speaker 1: detection and using as little energy as possible. It takes
Speaker 1: a sloth an entire month to digest just one leaf,
Speaker 1: meaning they don't have much wiggle room when it comes
Speaker 1: to expending energy. The laborious process of going up and
Speaker 1: down the tree is compounded by the actual pooping process.
Speaker 1: Sloths do a little dance at the base of the
Speaker 1: tree to create a hole for the feces, and then
Speaker 1: shake their hind quarters once more to cover it up.
Speaker 1: This process requires you guessed it plenty of precious energy.
Speaker 1: A lot of theories have been put forth about why
Speaker 1: sloths feel the need to expend so much effort and
Speaker 1: expose themselves to so much danger just to toilet. One
Speaker 1: theory is it sloth moths, which live in sloth hair,
Speaker 1: actually lay their eggs in the feces during the long
Speaker 1: poop process. Then once they hatch and mature in their
Speaker 1: carefully prepared environment, they fly up to take residence in
Speaker 1: the host sloths fur. Many experts, though, are skeptical of
Speaker 1: this explanation because the sloths don't particularly benefit from the behavior,
Speaker 1: and nature isn't generally known for its selfless generosity. More likely,
Speaker 1: but as yet unproven, is that the strange behavior comes
Speaker 1: back to reproduction, as it so often does when living
Speaker 1: things are involved. Explained, the main reason is probably so
Speaker 1: that other sloths can find them, a particularly males looking
Speaker 1: for females. Usually the slaws come down every five to
Speaker 1: seven days, but when females are in heat it's every day,
Speaker 1: so it's likely to be mostly to do with reproduction. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it appears at sloth poop says a lot more about
Speaker 1: the animal than merely what they've been nothing on. Cliff wrote,
Speaker 1: pheromones present in the uinin feces can provide a lot
Speaker 1: of important information about the individual animal. If the sloths
Speaker 1: just let everything go from the canopy, these messages would
Speaker 1: be easily lost. We have heaps of data showing some
Speaker 1: really interesting patterns between a female's estra cycle and the
Speaker 1: patterns of defecation. We'll be waiting patiently for the answer
Speaker 1: to this mystery, because if observing sloss teaches anything, it's patients.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Aliya Hoyt and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other moving topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff Works dot com. M