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