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