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Selects: How Sloths Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
0:03
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode on sloths.
0:08
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that sloths spring the absolute best out of humans,
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Speaker 1: and I suspect I'm working on a theory here that
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Speaker 1: it's because we have some evolutionary memory of some moment
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Speaker 1: where human beings were saved from extinction through the direct
0:22
Speaker 1: intervention of sloths. Like I said, it's a theory and
0:25
Speaker 1: I'm still working out the details here, but I'll keep
0:27
Speaker 1: you posted in the meantime. Enjoy this wonderful episode on sloths.
0:37
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:40
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:49
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Josh t
0:54
Speaker 1: over there. They can about the number twenty three, just
0:58
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking about until see that's right, I forgot that. Yeah,
1:03
Speaker 1: he's in Illuminati stuff if I remember correctly. So he's
1:07
Speaker 1: also look look at this guy. He is so good, Chuck.
1:10
Speaker 1: He knows to just sit there and keep quiet even
1:12
Speaker 1: though he's dying inside right now, to talk about the
1:14
Speaker 1: number twenty three. Uh if I had just pulled out
1:17
Speaker 1: some random show from like our archive from years ago?
1:21
Speaker 1: Could you see who the producer was? Oh? I don't know,
1:25
Speaker 1: Let's let's give it a try. Um geez, Now I
1:28
Speaker 1: have to think of a show that we did years ago.
1:30
Speaker 1: Uh well, since we're doing an animal show today, the
1:33
Speaker 1: only I can think of his animals elephants, Jerry that
1:37
Speaker 1: long ago? Probably Jerry? Or how about this? Can you
1:42
Speaker 1: name any shows that other guest producers were on off
1:45
Speaker 1: the top of your head? Um, no, this game turns
1:51
Speaker 1: so lame so fast. I feel like we we well,
1:54
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick's too busy these days, but we can't have
1:57
Speaker 1: Matt anymore in here because all Matt would do was
2:00
Speaker 1: sit there and like not his head like uh huh
2:02
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Either that or his hands will be clasped
2:06
Speaker 1: together with this look of sheer joy on his face,
2:09
Speaker 1: just to hear us talk. What was great? It made it.
2:12
Speaker 1: It made recording that much better. In the old days.
2:14
Speaker 1: Matt's older and more cynical. Now he doesn't care anymore
2:16
Speaker 1: about us, right, He's true released into the forest like
2:21
Speaker 1: a baby sloth, right, which is good. That's what you
2:24
Speaker 1: want to do with either Matt Frederick or a baby sloth.
2:27
Speaker 1: You don't want to keep them in captivity because sloths
2:30
Speaker 1: don't do very well in captivity. Matt does okay in captivity,
2:33
Speaker 1: he's fine, but a sloth not nearly as well as
2:37
Speaker 1: what Matt Frederick could do it captivity. Uh. Yeah, and
2:40
Speaker 1: you were watching just before we recorded. Everyone should know
2:43
Speaker 1: Josh was watching the twenty eight million view YouTube video
2:47
Speaker 1: of Kristen Bell. Uh can we call her friend of
2:51
Speaker 1: the show. Sure? I mean she's probably not going to
2:54
Speaker 1: write in to object to it, so yeah, we could.
2:56
Speaker 1: We could call her that. She's the stuff you should know.
2:58
Speaker 1: Listener has been over the years, as is her husband, Mr.
3:02
Speaker 1: Deck Shepherd, who was also a movie crush guest um
3:05
Speaker 1: and he has his own podcast to Armchair Expert. Yeah,
3:08
Speaker 1: he's crushing it right out of the games. Those are good,
3:11
Speaker 1: good podcast. Actually, I don't know if you listen to
3:13
Speaker 1: this are good. So she very famously he brought her
3:18
Speaker 1: a sloth on her birthday and she went on Ellen
3:21
Speaker 1: and they showed video and it's still just one of
3:23
Speaker 1: the great videos you can ever watch. Is It's very sweet.
3:27
Speaker 1: She's like having a meltdown and fully fully melting down. Yeah,
3:32
Speaker 1: like crying, like sobbing because she's so excited that there's
3:37
Speaker 1: a sloth in her house because this is something she's
3:39
Speaker 1: she's wanted to meet a sloth like for her whole
3:41
Speaker 1: life and now she gets to. Yeah, and I watched
3:45
Speaker 1: it again today too, because after doing this research, I
3:48
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute, was she holding a sloth
3:51
Speaker 1: because that's not good? And uh, it showed a picture
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Speaker 1: and she's not. The sloth is on its little perch
3:57
Speaker 1: and she's very respect lee next to the sloth, exactly
4:02
Speaker 1: how it should be. If there's any reason that that
4:06
Speaker 1: kept Kristen Bell from being America's Sweetheart, which I can't
4:09
Speaker 1: think of one that that erased it right there, just
4:14
Speaker 1: knowing how to be around a sloth when you have
4:16
Speaker 1: meltdowns at the idea of being around a slot that's
4:18
Speaker 1: that's some serious self control and for the benefit of
4:21
Speaker 1: the animal, that's great stuff. Yeah, not touching the animal
4:24
Speaker 1: and uh, literally offering for me to change my daughter's
4:28
Speaker 1: diaper in her restaurant booth. Yeah, that's right, because she
4:32
Speaker 1: said the bathroom was dirty. She's a class act. Class act. So, Charles,
4:38
Speaker 1: you mentioned um elephants. We did an elephant episode and
4:41
Speaker 1: that that it's similar to the to the whole sloth thing.
4:45
Speaker 1: Like you see a sloth, especially if you see a
4:47
Speaker 1: sloth in captivity at a zoo or something like that,
4:49
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I want to carry it around like
4:52
Speaker 1: a baby or something like that. It's a sloth. It's
4:54
Speaker 1: one of the cutest things on the planet. But you
4:56
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. Slouce don't really eel with
5:00
Speaker 1: captivity very well. Although they can live way longer in captivity,
5:04
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily happy. But I was thinking one of
5:07
Speaker 1: the things, one of the reasons why people seem to
5:10
Speaker 1: think that they are happy or would want to be
5:12
Speaker 1: picked up is because, at least among one type of sloth,
5:16
Speaker 1: they're always smiling. They're smiling, which makes them super cute.
5:20
Speaker 1: They also have a mullet. That's the the three toad
5:24
Speaker 1: Brady Puss sloth um. They have a mullet and they
5:27
Speaker 1: are always smiling. But if you look, it's just the
5:29
Speaker 1: coloring on their face that happens to resemble a smile.
5:32
Speaker 1: They're they're they have so little muscle mass that they
5:36
Speaker 1: don't have the capability of smiling, making their face smile.
5:40
Speaker 1: It's just the colorings on their fur. Yeah, which is
5:43
Speaker 1: can be very misleading to us dumb humans because they
5:46
Speaker 1: can be scared or stress out of their mind and
5:50
Speaker 1: it still looks like they are just chilling and smiling. Right. Look,
5:54
Speaker 1: it's smiling. It loves it when I juggle it with
5:56
Speaker 1: two bowling balls in a flaming a flaming pit fork.
6:01
Speaker 1: Oh I could come up with. I wonder where that
6:04
Speaker 1: was going. Have you ever seen a flaming pitchfork? Is
6:06
Speaker 1: something only in the Simpsons. So let's get into this
6:11
Speaker 1: because the cuteness is just it's cute overload. When it
6:16
Speaker 1: comes to slows, they are ridiculously cute. Um. Their whole
6:21
Speaker 1: vibe is just you know, right up my alley at least. Sure,
6:27
Speaker 1: not that I'm lazy mellow and but well you know me,
6:31
Speaker 1: the real me isn't super mellow, but I like to
6:34
Speaker 1: pretend to be sure, I strive to be. You get
6:37
Speaker 1: the sloth vibe. Yeah, it's it's an aspirational state sloftht nous. Yeah,
6:42
Speaker 1: so I love. The very first sentence of this research
6:44
Speaker 1: says they're highly successful, which kind of cracked me up
6:47
Speaker 1: when I read it because I pictured slaws of course
6:49
Speaker 1: in business suits like running a company, right, can you
6:54
Speaker 1: hurry it up? I have no time for this. But
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Speaker 1: what that means is is that for a very very,
7:00
Speaker 1: very very long time, sloths generally have flourished in the world. Yeah,
7:06
Speaker 1: they think that they probably evolved. Um. They're part of
7:10
Speaker 1: a group or a family or some taxonomic designation called
7:15
Speaker 1: um zenn athara and zenathara um are. It's it's like
7:20
Speaker 1: the weirdo group that's sloths and eaters umillos. Sure, depending
7:30
Speaker 1: on whether you want to be classy or not or
7:32
Speaker 1: sound tough, sure zen artha Okay, I'll go with that,
7:36
Speaker 1: but it's sloths and eaters armadillos um. Pretty much any
7:42
Speaker 1: odd um animal you can think of would would fall
7:46
Speaker 1: into zen artha what what what did you say? Zan
7:49
Speaker 1: arthur ar zen arthra. So they all kind of formed
7:55
Speaker 1: together in isolation on what was once an island South
7:59
Speaker 1: America as as long back as eighty million years ago. What, yeah,
8:04
Speaker 1: is an island? Yeah, you know, like the whole continental
8:07
Speaker 1: drifts and all that stuff, and it decided to make
8:10
Speaker 1: friends with Central America. Yeah, and and higher sea levels
8:13
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. When the sea levels got locked
8:16
Speaker 1: up in ice or when a lot of seawater got
8:18
Speaker 1: locked up in ice. The land bridge that is Central
8:20
Speaker 1: America came along and said, hey, build some zigarattes on me.
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Speaker 1: So they are highly successful. Uh, they are very slow moving,
8:31
Speaker 1: like everyone knows. Um, they are in Central and South America.
8:35
Speaker 1: Still no surprise there. Um. And like you said, there
8:38
Speaker 1: are two kinds there. The two toad, uh, caleppus. I
8:45
Speaker 1: was going to coleo opus, oh, colo opus, colo opus
8:50
Speaker 1: colia rhymes of bosephis. Okay, that's a good way to
8:53
Speaker 1: remember it. Uh. And then the little tom Brady Puss,
8:57
Speaker 1: which is the three toad. But it's a bit of
8:59
Speaker 1: a miss now because the two toad has three toes
9:04
Speaker 1: but two fingers. Right. That's how they're classified or separated
9:07
Speaker 1: from one another, the two toad or the three toad. Right.
9:10
Speaker 1: So um, And technically I read somewhere, Chuck, that they
9:14
Speaker 1: actually don't have legs. There's a four armed creature. Is
9:18
Speaker 1: that the designation for arms? Yeah, from what I saw,
9:22
Speaker 1: but they really just pay attention to how many fingers
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Speaker 1: are on the four arms or the four limbs what
9:29
Speaker 1: we would think of as their arms, their front arms,
9:31
Speaker 1: but they're really all four arms. And the way that
9:34
Speaker 1: I kept, um the two separated, so too toe is
9:39
Speaker 1: colo Opus, three toad is Brady puss is that I
9:43
Speaker 1: thought the Brady bunch has more kids, So the Brady
9:48
Speaker 1: has more toes and it's been working all day. Frankly,
9:51
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. That's the second pneumonic device you've dropped
9:55
Speaker 1: in the first like ten minutes of the show. Yeah,
9:58
Speaker 1: what do you think? You're doing? Great? Good as long
10:00
Speaker 1: as it's working. So uh. The two toad guys and ladies,
10:05
Speaker 1: they roam um as far as laws go, a pretty
10:09
Speaker 1: great distance. Uh. They can forage and ranges up to
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Speaker 1: three and fifty acres, whereas the three toad guys they
10:17
Speaker 1: only have a range of about thirteen acres. Uh. And
10:19
Speaker 1: then there's the cutest of all sloth, the pygmy sloth
10:23
Speaker 1: that are just on one one little island off the
10:25
Speaker 1: coast of Panama, right and they're actually critically endangered as
10:29
Speaker 1: far as later they are so cute, it's ridiculous. But like,
10:35
Speaker 1: as close as the sloths are, like, there's not that
10:38
Speaker 1: many differences besides the number of toes on their four limbs.
10:42
Speaker 1: Um that the fact that you know one has the
10:44
Speaker 1: smile markings. The three toad as the smile markings and
10:47
Speaker 1: the mullet haircut. The other one looks like. Um, there's
10:50
Speaker 1: a site called Slothville. It's a it's a conservation site
10:54
Speaker 1: run by a woman named Lucy Cook, and um, she
10:57
Speaker 1: says that the two toad slaws look a bit like
11:00
Speaker 1: a cross between a Wookie and a pig. And I
11:03
Speaker 1: think she absolutely nailed it with that description, right, yeah,
11:06
Speaker 1: what does them look like? The little What was the
11:07
Speaker 1: Christmas Special? What was Chewbacca's son? Oh? Man, if you
11:12
Speaker 1: can remember that, Chuck, I'll buy you a case of
11:14
Speaker 1: beer my hand. Put your phone down. I don't know.
11:18
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but that's sort of what it reminded
11:20
Speaker 1: me of Norman. I'm pretty sure it was Norman, Norman
11:25
Speaker 1: Norman Bacare you right? I can't remember. I can't either.
11:31
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's somebody out there. It's like you will
11:33
Speaker 1: make beer, Josh. I only said that I was making
11:36
Speaker 1: that offer to Chuck, so wookie to pick. That's a
11:38
Speaker 1: pretty good descriptor, right. So my point is this, though, um,
11:43
Speaker 1: as as similar as two toad sloths and three toad
11:46
Speaker 1: sloths seem, there are some differences, but really, in the
11:49
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things there. They seem a lot, a
11:52
Speaker 1: lot closer than say, you know, a a dove and
11:57
Speaker 1: a sloth agreed flaming pitchfork in a slow um. But
12:03
Speaker 1: they're actually really separate. They're not even they're multiple different species.
12:08
Speaker 1: They're not even in the same genus. And for comparison,
12:12
Speaker 1: humans and chimps are in the same genus. Two different
12:15
Speaker 1: types of slots aren't even in the same genus, So
12:18
Speaker 1: there's a big distinction between the two and um. I
12:21
Speaker 1: looked up sloth News, which is fast breaking strangely enough,
12:25
Speaker 1: but they there's a study that came out recently where
12:28
Speaker 1: they did some molecular DNA studies on sloth um sloth evolution,
12:34
Speaker 1: and they found that they may the two toad and
12:36
Speaker 1: the three toad slots maybe even further separated and may
12:39
Speaker 1: have evolved independently of one another. That they may be
12:43
Speaker 1: even more distantly related than we than we think. So
12:46
Speaker 1: as similar as they seem to be, they're actually pretty different.
12:50
Speaker 1: Although they are really similar. It's a it's a weird
12:52
Speaker 1: fluke of evolution all around. Yeah, characteristically, I think they're
12:56
Speaker 1: fairly similar. Um. The two toed variety are a little
12:59
Speaker 1: bit bigger uh and hang upside down a little bit
13:02
Speaker 1: more than the three toad variety, who you'll see those
13:05
Speaker 1: sitting upright sometimes in trees. But I read somewhere that
13:08
Speaker 1: they Slaus can spend up the of their life upside down. Yes,
13:13
Speaker 1: it's amazing. They do everything upside down. They mate upside down,
13:16
Speaker 1: they give birth upside down, they do almost everything that
13:20
Speaker 1: they do upside down hanging and and did you say
13:23
Speaker 1: it was the two toad that spend more of their
13:26
Speaker 1: life upside down than the three to toad a little
13:28
Speaker 1: bit more hang time, right, So that's one difference. But
13:31
Speaker 1: even still, it's not like the three toad or just
13:33
Speaker 1: averse to being upside down. I think both of them
13:36
Speaker 1: spend so much time upside down that the part of
13:38
Speaker 1: their hair, rather than being on their backs or their
13:41
Speaker 1: head the top of their head like ours is um,
13:44
Speaker 1: it's on their bellies because their upside down so much
13:46
Speaker 1: that that's how gravity is has forced the hair to part,
13:49
Speaker 1: just like shimp, just like an upside down shimp boy
13:54
Speaker 1: ship's hair. Wow, it was something, it was something the
13:58
Speaker 1: original butt cut. Yeah it was, wouldn't it. Yeah? So
14:02
Speaker 1: the Brady Puss also has an extra neck vertebrae. So
14:05
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen a sloth uh seemingly turn its
14:09
Speaker 1: head three hundred sixty degrees, it's because they can turn
14:12
Speaker 1: their head about two D seventy degrees and have almost
14:16
Speaker 1: a three D sixty degree you know, counting their peripheral
14:19
Speaker 1: vision range of sight. Yes, yes, but without the body
14:26
Speaker 1: that is that is strictly from moving their head. They
14:29
Speaker 1: actually again, they lack so much muscle mass and tissue
14:33
Speaker 1: that they don't have the muscles to move their eyeballs
14:35
Speaker 1: in their in their heads, so when they look around,
14:38
Speaker 1: they have to move their whole head. But it has
14:40
Speaker 1: helped out for sure, especially after a hard night on
14:45
Speaker 1: the Saturday. But they they they the fact that they
14:49
Speaker 1: have that extra vertebrae helps them look around more. But
14:52
Speaker 1: it's just one more thing that makes them an extraordinarily
14:55
Speaker 1: unusual creature because only sloths and manatees are our mammals
15:01
Speaker 1: that have more than seven vertebrae. Every other mammal on
15:04
Speaker 1: the planet has seven vertebrae, and slossa manatees are the
15:08
Speaker 1: only two that don't. Manitees a mammal, yeah all right, yeah,
15:12
Speaker 1: they breathe there, They just spend a lot of time
15:14
Speaker 1: in water. They were probably some sort of like wool
15:16
Speaker 1: for bear something that eventually took to water. Well. Speaking
15:20
Speaker 1: of bears and water, uh, slaus are really good swimmers. Um.
15:25
Speaker 1: If you look up a YouTube video of slaw swimming,
15:27
Speaker 1: it's actually they can kind of get around, um and
15:30
Speaker 1: are somewhat graceful in the water. They can hold their
15:33
Speaker 1: breath for up to forty minutes, and in order to
15:37
Speaker 1: do so, they can cut their heart rate by two
15:39
Speaker 1: thirds and their metabolism down, which is like they already
15:43
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll get into their metabolism later, but that's
15:46
Speaker 1: saying something. If they can cut their metabolism down even
15:48
Speaker 1: more on purpose, yeah for real, because the the sloth
15:52
Speaker 1: metabolism is a thing to to behold in your mind.
15:57
Speaker 1: It's like, um, yeah, we'll get to it in a
16:00
Speaker 1: little bit, but just just know that I'm excited to
16:02
Speaker 1: talk about sloth metabolism. Uh. And then I mentioned speaking
16:06
Speaker 1: of bears, they their original predecessor back in the day
16:11
Speaker 1: was something called a giant ground sloth or a megatherium.
16:16
Speaker 1: And if you look at this thing, it looks sort
16:18
Speaker 1: of like a bear. Um, its face is a little
16:21
Speaker 1: bit different, but it kind of looks like a just
16:23
Speaker 1: a big giant brown bear. It looked like a giant
16:26
Speaker 1: beaver to me without the tail. I really that's I mean,
16:30
Speaker 1: that's what I thought. Well, beaver without a tail is
16:32
Speaker 1: really just a tiny bear with big teeth. I guess so,
16:35
Speaker 1: I guess so. But they found that just from examining
16:38
Speaker 1: its bones, they found that it could walk on um
16:41
Speaker 1: its back legs, which makes it the largest bipedal land
16:45
Speaker 1: mammal that ever lived, which is pretty cool. And there
16:49
Speaker 1: was a sloth ancestor amazing, and we used to eat
16:53
Speaker 1: them to chuck. We found um tool marks on some
16:55
Speaker 1: of the bones, and they think, well, humans probably hunted
16:58
Speaker 1: it to extinction. Tuk tuk. I guess yeah. Although we've
17:03
Speaker 1: determined he was inn Anderthal, right right, he's been designated
17:06
Speaker 1: officially as a neandertal. Uh. Shall we take a break.
17:10
Speaker 1: I think it's high time. Man, all right, this is
17:13
Speaker 1: our slowest episode ever and we'll be right back. So
17:45
Speaker 1: before we get going on more real sloth stuff, I'm
17:48
Speaker 1: assuming you have not seen the movie Zutopia, or have you.
17:53
Speaker 1: I don't think no, I have a kids movie. No, No,
17:56
Speaker 1: I haven't. There's a there's a sloth scene where that's
18:01
Speaker 1: very very funny, and in fact, they made that a
18:03
Speaker 1: very big part of the original movie trailer where these
18:06
Speaker 1: uh animals are in a hurry to find out some
18:09
Speaker 1: information from the d m V. And so they go
18:12
Speaker 1: to the d m V and of course, as you know,
18:14
Speaker 1: sort of an in joke to anyone who has ever
18:16
Speaker 1: been at the d m B, which is notably slow,
18:18
Speaker 1: they had a sloth that was it was completely run
18:21
Speaker 1: by sloths, and there was just this one great scene
18:24
Speaker 1: where they go up and try to get information from
18:26
Speaker 1: the sloth and they really do it right, they take
18:28
Speaker 1: their time, and uh, it's funny for kids and adults
18:32
Speaker 1: are like highly recommend it is. And I mean like
18:35
Speaker 1: it's probably fairly accurate because I slows. You know, everybody
18:40
Speaker 1: knows they're super super slow. It's not it's not really
18:45
Speaker 1: an overstatement or exaggeration. They genuinely are extremely slow. I
18:50
Speaker 1: saw that they move on the ground, which is when
18:53
Speaker 1: they move about the fastest aside from swimming, is something
18:56
Speaker 1: like half a kilometer per hour at top speed, and
19:01
Speaker 1: that they'll they'll move maybe six to eight feet up
19:04
Speaker 1: a tree in a minute. And these things are are
19:09
Speaker 1: made to climb trees and that's how fast, or I
19:13
Speaker 1: should say that's how slow they move. Yeah, they're The
19:16
Speaker 1: actual term sloth um dates back to the twelfth century
19:21
Speaker 1: in Spain, or in the Spanish language at least, they
19:25
Speaker 1: were called los petasosos, which translates to the lazies, which
19:31
Speaker 1: is hysterical because Emily and I often call animals lazies.
19:34
Speaker 1: Look at those lazies because pets are lazy. Sure, yeah,
19:39
Speaker 1: they're not sloth lazy though, No, they're not sloth lazy.
19:42
Speaker 1: But that literally translates into the lazies. And then when
19:45
Speaker 1: the Spanish explorers started talking about the lazies, it was
19:48
Speaker 1: translated into the word sloth in English in about the
19:52
Speaker 1: I guess early seventeenth century. Yeah, yeah, because it was
19:55
Speaker 1: it was a cleric I believe, who was like, oh, well,
19:59
Speaker 1: we don't talk about lazy this, we talked about sloth
20:01
Speaker 1: because it's a one of the seven deadly sins. Now,
20:04
Speaker 1: it's really kind of a down word when it's used
20:08
Speaker 1: as a as an insult, for sure, you know, but
20:12
Speaker 1: it's like the slaws are the best. So I don't know,
20:14
Speaker 1: I like it, I know, but at the same time,
20:16
Speaker 1: it's like if somebody calls you slothful, you know that
20:19
Speaker 1: they walked right past lazy like they saw it and said, no,
20:23
Speaker 1: lazy is not enough. I really want to drive home
20:26
Speaker 1: how much I disdain your laziness. Yeah, that that is
20:29
Speaker 1: a good descriptor like if someone at work as slow
20:31
Speaker 1: as something and you describe them as slothful instead of
20:33
Speaker 1: just slow, right, because you're you're passing judgment on them
20:37
Speaker 1: as well, like like biblical style judgment, like you're going
20:40
Speaker 1: to hell. That's how slow you you took and getting
20:44
Speaker 1: this TPS report to me. Uh. Two toed slaws are omnivorous,
20:51
Speaker 1: so they can eat animals. Um, I didn't see where
20:55
Speaker 1: they do that a lot. They mainly still eat fruits
20:57
Speaker 1: and leaves and twigs and things, but they they will
21:00
Speaker 1: eat birds sometimes in lizards. I would imagine they have
21:04
Speaker 1: to be wounded or something because it's not like they
21:08
Speaker 1: I mean, surely they don't hunt. They're not fast enough,
21:11
Speaker 1: right they're Yeah, they're not snatching a bird out of
21:13
Speaker 1: the air or something like that. They're not going after hummingbirds.
21:15
Speaker 1: It would have to be like maybe a recently killed
21:19
Speaker 1: or a an injured bird. And man, if you're an
21:22
Speaker 1: injured bird in the tropical rainforest of Central and South America.
21:26
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the last thing you want to see is
21:29
Speaker 1: a hungry too toad sloth slowly coming at you, because
21:33
Speaker 1: you know it's going to take a really long time
21:35
Speaker 1: for it to eat you alive. There's a funny YouTube
21:37
Speaker 1: video actually called when a Sloth Chases You. It's just
21:44
Speaker 1: a sloth on the ground like set to horror music.
21:48
Speaker 1: It's awesome. So I watched a lot of sloth videos.
21:53
Speaker 1: There's well, there's a lot of good ones out there.
21:55
Speaker 1: I recommend looking up sloth fight. Do you think it'd
21:59
Speaker 1: be sad out or disturbing, But there's a bunch of
22:01
Speaker 1: different videos and it's actually it's in the grand sloth style.
22:05
Speaker 1: It's really cute when sloth's fight fight fight like they
22:12
Speaker 1: they look like they're taking it seriously and they're all agitated.
22:15
Speaker 1: But it's impossible for us to take the sloth fight seriously.
22:19
Speaker 1: It's just too cute and they're just too incompetent at fighting.
22:24
Speaker 1: Oh dear, the three toad guys, they are very much
22:28
Speaker 1: more picky eaters and they eat um generally, these toxic
22:32
Speaker 1: leaves from just a few trees and they they hang around,
22:37
Speaker 1: like if they find a good tree that they like,
22:38
Speaker 1: they will hang around that tree for a long long time. Yeah,
22:41
Speaker 1: there's apparently they know that some three toad sloths will
22:45
Speaker 1: inhabit the same tree for their whole life. It's it's rare,
22:48
Speaker 1: it's unusual, but even still, I mean, their entire range
22:53
Speaker 1: usually doesn't extend over like thirteen acres or five and
22:56
Speaker 1: a half hectares, right, Like, it's a very small, all
23:00
Speaker 1: limited area that a sloth, a three toed sloth in particular,
23:04
Speaker 1: will will inhabit their whole life. Right, I think we
23:06
Speaker 1: can talk about the metabolism now since we're eating. Yes,
23:09
Speaker 1: I'm so happy, so I know what the I know
23:12
Speaker 1: what you're affect of the show probably has to just
23:14
Speaker 1: go ahead. There's like eid in here. So the reason
23:18
Speaker 1: slots move so slowly is because in part they metabolize
23:24
Speaker 1: so slowly. Like when you when you metabolize, you're converting
23:28
Speaker 1: like food into energy, right, and you're doing all sorts
23:32
Speaker 1: of stuff with that. You're moving your muscles, you're you're walking,
23:35
Speaker 1: you're laughing, you're talking, you're recording a podcast, you're digesting food.
23:40
Speaker 1: And slots are mammals. So they do have this metabolism
23:44
Speaker 1: that's similar to um any other mammal metasilm metabolism. It's
23:48
Speaker 1: just way slower and therefore it's way weaker. Like the
23:53
Speaker 1: human metabolism puts out about eighty watts of energy at
23:57
Speaker 1: any given time, sloths put out less than four watts.
24:02
Speaker 1: It's just extraordinarily slow, and even compared to humans are
24:06
Speaker 1: compared to other animals there same size, they they metabolize
24:10
Speaker 1: things way more slowly. So the reason that they move
24:13
Speaker 1: so slowly is because they literally don't have the energy
24:18
Speaker 1: to move much faster. Yeah, it's it takes a whole
24:22
Speaker 1: month to digest a meal. Um, they have to do it.
24:26
Speaker 1: That's slow. If they would digest faster, it could poison themselves.
24:29
Speaker 1: Because they're eating these toxic leaves. They don't have incisors,
24:33
Speaker 1: so they they trim these leaves down. They smack their
24:37
Speaker 1: little lips together and trim these leaves down. Uh. And again,
24:41
Speaker 1: I hate to say the word cute again, but it's
24:43
Speaker 1: pretty adorable to see a little sloth chewing on a leaf. Yeah,
24:47
Speaker 1: but imagine you're a wounded bird and a toothless sloth
24:50
Speaker 1: is eating you. To death. Yeah, I imagine it's not
24:53
Speaker 1: a quick a quick death. No, you get gummed to death. Uh.
24:58
Speaker 1: And I think the fact of the show probably is
25:01
Speaker 1: this whole um, the whole farting business. Sure, we'll take
25:06
Speaker 1: it all, right, Well, here's the deal. They eat so
25:08
Speaker 1: slow that they don't even have gas that builds up
25:12
Speaker 1: in their system. Uh. That is how slow they they
25:15
Speaker 1: are digesting their food, so the gas just gets reabsorbed
25:19
Speaker 1: through the intestines and into the bloodstream. Uh. And it
25:22
Speaker 1: says here that they're the gases then, uh, respired out
25:26
Speaker 1: of the lungs. Does that mean that they mouth for
25:28
Speaker 1: it or does it? Yeah? I mean that's what I saw,
25:32
Speaker 1: is that they have Yeah, they basically pass those same
25:35
Speaker 1: gases that they normally would out of their their fannie
25:38
Speaker 1: in the American sense um the out of their mouth
25:43
Speaker 1: through breathing. Interesting. So, yeah, I guess the mouth fart
25:47
Speaker 1: worst band name ever. Worse than Diarrhea Planet. I think
25:52
Speaker 1: you're right, man, fits better than no, it's actually worse
25:55
Speaker 1: than frozen poop Knife. They should do a joint tour. Yeah. Yeah,
26:01
Speaker 1: you know that mouth fart is going to be the
26:03
Speaker 1: opener always. They're never going to make it to the headline.
26:06
Speaker 1: Are never headline, you know, And I say boys because
26:09
Speaker 1: there's no way a girl band would be called mouth
26:11
Speaker 1: fart there. So uh. They also have a multi chambered
26:16
Speaker 1: stomach sort of like a cow um, which is really
26:19
Speaker 1: interesting because that's like a third of their body weight
26:23
Speaker 1: if their stomachs are full. Yeah yeah, and I mean,
26:27
Speaker 1: like the reason why it's just so so much of
26:30
Speaker 1: their body ways because they digest foods so slowly. They
26:32
Speaker 1: have to have this multi chambered stomach to get as
26:36
Speaker 1: many nutrients as they possibly can out of it. And
26:39
Speaker 1: even still, like, it's a really terrible evolutionary strategy to
26:43
Speaker 1: evolve as a a strictly um is it or bore
26:49
Speaker 1: of us as strictly tree dwelling herbivore, Like that's that's
26:55
Speaker 1: a really bad strategy because you have to be small
26:58
Speaker 1: enough to exist in the tree, right, um, But at
27:01
Speaker 1: the same time, you have to be big enough to
27:03
Speaker 1: eat tons of leaves every day. Well, the if not,
27:08
Speaker 1: you're because the leaves don't give you they're not very
27:10
Speaker 1: energy den so you have to eat a ton of
27:11
Speaker 1: them to get good energy. Well, the slows evolved the
27:14
Speaker 1: different strategy, they just slowed their metabolism down, so they
27:18
Speaker 1: can be small, but they don't have to eat that
27:20
Speaker 1: many leaves and in fact, they can go for days
27:23
Speaker 1: without eating. And because they digest so slowly, they only
27:28
Speaker 1: poop about once a week. But to to the central
27:32
Speaker 1: cog of this whole adaptation is having a big stomach
27:37
Speaker 1: that can very slowly digest every possible nutrient out of
27:41
Speaker 1: the food that they eat. Yeah, so they do. They
27:44
Speaker 1: defecate and urinate once a week. Um, generally in the
27:47
Speaker 1: same spot, kind of at the base of the tree.
27:49
Speaker 1: I don't think they like to wander too far because
27:52
Speaker 1: when they're on the ground they are um much more
27:55
Speaker 1: at risk than when they're up in their tree. Um. Yeah,
27:58
Speaker 1: because they're super slow and they're you know, they're at
28:01
Speaker 1: risk for attack for you know whatever. Any any sort
28:04
Speaker 1: of larger mammal could come by and have a sloth
28:07
Speaker 1: lunch at any time, right right, In particular, the harpie
28:11
Speaker 1: eagle is like their main predator. But also, yeah, they're
28:14
Speaker 1: they're definitely vulnerable to acelots and jaguars and um virtually
28:20
Speaker 1: any other predator in the jungle because they move so
28:23
Speaker 1: slowly and they have such an inability to defend themselves.
28:27
Speaker 1: But what they've what that was. Some researchers think that
28:31
Speaker 1: the reason sloths evolved to move so slowly is because
28:35
Speaker 1: it's a defense mechanism for them that rather than um
28:39
Speaker 1: like the howler monkeys that they share the jungle with.
28:42
Speaker 1: You know, when something comes along um and and gets
28:45
Speaker 1: the howler monkeys agitated, the holler monkeys scream and run
28:48
Speaker 1: around and try to escape. Right. The sloths, who may
28:52
Speaker 1: be in the same tree as a howler monkey, um,
28:55
Speaker 1: just stays motionless and silent, and so they camouflage in
28:59
Speaker 1: with tree. So that really slow movement is actually a
29:04
Speaker 1: defensive adaptation as well. Yeah, I think the sloths uh
29:07
Speaker 1: defensive motto is nothing to see here. You're just like,
29:12
Speaker 1: we're just gonna be really still. Let these monkeys take
29:14
Speaker 1: all the attention and no one will notice this. And
29:17
Speaker 1: that's kind of the idea. Yeah, that's exactly the idea,
29:20
Speaker 1: and it works. It actually does work, and it's it's
29:22
Speaker 1: a it's misleading I think to say, which means I
29:25
Speaker 1: accidentally misleat everybody that's that slows have no um recourse
29:30
Speaker 1: if they are found out. I saw at least one
29:33
Speaker 1: video where a harpy eagle found a sloth in a
29:37
Speaker 1: tree and lands right next to it, and the sloth
29:40
Speaker 1: just slowly like lifts its arm up and kind of
29:42
Speaker 1: swats behind it with its claw man at the harpy eagle,
29:46
Speaker 1: and the hearty eagle look kind of puzzled, but it worked,
29:50
Speaker 1: like the harpy eagle left it alone. So yeah, they
29:54
Speaker 1: can ward off danger, just not that frequently. Actually, yeah,
29:59
Speaker 1: and know they despite the fact that they move super slow,
30:02
Speaker 1: they and they are lazy. They don't actually sleep as
30:05
Speaker 1: much as you would think. Um. In captivity they will
30:08
Speaker 1: sleep a lot longer because they have, you know, no
30:10
Speaker 1: predators around, no jaguars, and they understand that and they're like,
30:14
Speaker 1: all right, everything's cool. I can really dig in and
30:16
Speaker 1: sleep some. But out in the wild they sleep, um,
30:20
Speaker 1: you know, a little under ten hours, which is I
30:22
Speaker 1: guess if you would have asked me beforehand, I would
30:24
Speaker 1: I would have guessed, you know, fifteen and up first
30:27
Speaker 1: sloth for sloth sleep well, they will in captivity they
30:31
Speaker 1: sleep as much as fifteen to twenty hours a day.
30:34
Speaker 1: But in the wild they think, like you said, you know,
30:36
Speaker 1: they got to be on point. And they're not stinky either.
30:39
Speaker 1: Which is another great thing, even though you definitely don't
30:41
Speaker 1: want to slot as a pet um for reasons we'll
30:44
Speaker 1: talk about later. They don't smell, they smell um. They
30:48
Speaker 1: smell kind of like the trees they live in, which
30:50
Speaker 1: is kind of great and another defense mechanism. Yeah. So
30:53
Speaker 1: the reason that they smell like the trees that they
30:56
Speaker 1: live in is because sloths move so slowly that algae
31:01
Speaker 1: grows on them and their coats in their fur. This
31:03
Speaker 1: with the other sort of amazing part, like I had
31:06
Speaker 1: no idea. No, I didn't either, and I don't think
31:08
Speaker 1: researchers had much of an idea about this until recently.
31:11
Speaker 1: They knew that sloth's got covered with with green algae,
31:15
Speaker 1: especially during the rainy season. Normally they have like a
31:18
Speaker 1: tan or a brown colored coat, but when it gets
31:21
Speaker 1: rainy in the tropical rainforest they live in, uh, an
31:25
Speaker 1: algae like growth will build up on their coat, which
31:28
Speaker 1: I mean, you try to grow some algae on you,
31:30
Speaker 1: you can't do it. Even if you didn't take a shower,
31:32
Speaker 1: you move around too much. You couldn't get any algae
31:35
Speaker 1: to grow on you. Sloths can. And at first they thought,
31:38
Speaker 1: ha ha, that's that's hilarious. You had another funny fact
31:41
Speaker 1: about how slow sloths are. But as they've um, as
31:45
Speaker 1: they've researched more deeply into it, they found that actually
31:49
Speaker 1: the sloth coat is an amazing ecosystem in itself on
31:54
Speaker 1: the sloth, and that whether it's it's it's intentional or not,
31:59
Speaker 1: the sloth actually kind of cultivates a farm inside of
32:03
Speaker 1: its own cult that it uses to help feed itself to. Yeah. So,
32:08
Speaker 1: I mean I had seen pictures of these green tinted
32:10
Speaker 1: sloths and always kind of wonder what the deal was. Um,
32:14
Speaker 1: it helps act as camouflage, which is super helpful. And
32:17
Speaker 1: I don't know, did you mentioned the groove in the
32:19
Speaker 1: center of the hairs. Yeah, so each hair has a
32:22
Speaker 1: little groove down the center and that's where the algae
32:25
Speaker 1: is allowed to grow. And obviously because they're not moving fast,
32:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna get you know, more of a chance to
32:30
Speaker 1: grow too. But like you said, they are a little
32:33
Speaker 1: ecosystem into themselves in that fur. Uh. They did one
32:36
Speaker 1: study that found nine hundred and eighty beatles living on
32:40
Speaker 1: a single sloth, just taking roosts in there and their
32:43
Speaker 1: little jungle coats. Uh. And then there's this moth species.
32:47
Speaker 1: This is crazy. Um. The sloth moth, which is another
32:51
Speaker 1: great band name by the way, cryptosis, uh, caleppi, coloe
33:00
Speaker 1: be color weepie. Always say just the e. It's always
33:04
Speaker 1: o E. I think you're right, yeah, color Weepi, colo weepie,
33:09
Speaker 1: colo eppie, something like that. Amato tomato, Cryptosis colaiepie dyer Uh.
33:15
Speaker 1: And they they actually colonize exclusively in sloth fur. Right.
33:20
Speaker 1: That's the only place you will find that type of
33:23
Speaker 1: moth is living in the fur of a sloth. It's
33:26
Speaker 1: the sloth moth. Yeah, like totally symbiotic relationship. Uh. You
33:30
Speaker 1: know they climbed down the once a week to poop
33:32
Speaker 1: and they they these moths lay their eggs in that poop. Um.
33:37
Speaker 1: And yes, they can actually lay their eggs in dingle
33:41
Speaker 1: berries sloth berries. Everyone knows what that is, right, do
33:45
Speaker 1: we need to explain that? I don't know. I would
33:48
Speaker 1: say look it up. Okay, I think that's as far
33:53
Speaker 1: as we need to say. So the adult moths emerge
33:56
Speaker 1: from this poop uh, and they to say mama, and
34:01
Speaker 1: they fly up and take rest in the slots fur right,
34:06
Speaker 1: and then they mate and reproduce and then they lay
34:10
Speaker 1: eggs in the sloth poop and the circle of life continues.
34:13
Speaker 1: But again, this type of moth you won't find anywhere
34:17
Speaker 1: on earth except in the fur of a sloth. And
34:20
Speaker 1: then there's also beetles in there. And so as these
34:23
Speaker 1: things like grow and die and decay and other plant
34:26
Speaker 1: matter and whatever is floating around in the air in
34:30
Speaker 1: the rainforest all kind of combined and get stuck into
34:33
Speaker 1: these grooves and the hair of the sloth fur it
34:36
Speaker 1: forms this algae. And they know that there is a
34:40
Speaker 1: relationship between the sloth moth and the algae in that
34:44
Speaker 1: the slots that have the most moths also have the
34:47
Speaker 1: most algae. And they figured out it's just basically this
34:49
Speaker 1: decaying matter and they're like, Okay, this is too weird.
34:52
Speaker 1: Camouflage that kind of makes sense, but the fact that
34:57
Speaker 1: there's a moth that only lives in in the loth fir,
35:00
Speaker 1: and the more more of those moths there are, the
35:03
Speaker 1: more algae there is, it's just too weird. And um.
35:06
Speaker 1: They tested this algae and they found that it's rich
35:09
Speaker 1: in fats, and for a very long time they're like, Okay,
35:13
Speaker 1: the metabolism kind of explains how a sloth could sustain itself.
35:18
Speaker 1: It's just it burns so little energy that it it
35:21
Speaker 1: It can live on very, very nutrient sparse leaves. But
35:26
Speaker 1: it's still kind of a mystery. It doesn't fully make sense.
35:29
Speaker 1: And they think they figured out that the sloth as
35:31
Speaker 1: it's grooming itself eats this algae which is high in fats,
35:37
Speaker 1: and that that supplements its diet of leaves, and that
35:40
Speaker 1: that's really the combination of these leaves and this algae
35:43
Speaker 1: are what keeps the sloth alive over its lifetime. And
35:47
Speaker 1: in the meantime there urine and their feces are fertilizing
35:53
Speaker 1: the tree that is their habitat, right where these moths
35:56
Speaker 1: are also laying their eggs. So it's just like this
35:59
Speaker 1: really you nique symbiosis going on between plant, animal, and insect. Yeah,
36:05
Speaker 1: and everyone seems to be doing great. Yeah. And one
36:08
Speaker 1: of the thing I was like, well, you know, how
36:10
Speaker 1: much does that really help the sloth is pooping at
36:12
Speaker 1: the base of the tree once a week. Does that
36:14
Speaker 1: really help? And apparently it really does, and it's not
36:17
Speaker 1: one of those It is slow, really, so you just
36:20
Speaker 1: nailed it. So slows are so slow their poop actually
36:24
Speaker 1: slows down the decomposition in the tree because in the rainforest,
36:27
Speaker 1: decomposition happens so fast that the tree as actually nutrient
36:32
Speaker 1: depleted because the de comp happened so fast, sloth poop
36:36
Speaker 1: slows the whole process down and actually nurtures the tree
36:40
Speaker 1: even more. Yeah, it seems like everywhere the sloth goes,
36:42
Speaker 1: everyone just chills out it. Basically, the sloth dingleberries are
36:47
Speaker 1: just little rainbows trailing out of its behind. That's what
36:50
Speaker 1: slows have. You have to look closely, but you'll see it.
36:53
Speaker 1: It sounds like a story my daughter would make up.
36:56
Speaker 1: So you do share a birthday, hey, which is coming
37:01
Speaker 1: up actually probably right around the time this is released.
37:03
Speaker 1: So oh yeah, well, happy birth birthday Ruby. All right,
37:07
Speaker 1: we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk
37:09
Speaker 1: about sloth sex right after this. All right, Tuck, you
37:37
Speaker 1: promised it. You have to deliver sloth sex blow by blow.
37:42
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. This is where things like if
37:44
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, the sloth is the cutest thing,
37:46
Speaker 1: and this is all adorable, and they're just amazing. They
37:49
Speaker 1: are all those things. But this is when you might
37:51
Speaker 1: I just want to prepare everyone to be slightly disappointed
37:55
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit with the next couple of segments,
37:59
Speaker 1: because first of all, sloths, you want to just think
38:03
Speaker 1: they sit around and just hug in love on each
38:05
Speaker 1: other all the time. They're solitary creatures. They don't want
38:08
Speaker 1: to be around even other sloths. No, but but this
38:12
Speaker 1: is something that you can have to kind of pick
38:15
Speaker 1: yourself back up after that devastating blow in. In a
38:19
Speaker 1: square kilometer of rainforest, there might be something like seven
38:23
Speaker 1: hundred sloths even though there, yes, they're they're very dense
38:28
Speaker 1: neighborhoods of basically shut in weirdos. Imagine that that's a
38:32
Speaker 1: sloth community. The most devastating thing is coming up later.
38:37
Speaker 1: I know you know what I'm talking about. Oh yes, boy.
38:41
Speaker 1: But the males, like, let's say two sloths did find
38:44
Speaker 1: themselves in the same tree, they might get into a
38:47
Speaker 1: little fight, but more than likely they'll just, you know,
38:50
Speaker 1: one of them will leave and they'll go find their
38:51
Speaker 1: own tree. And it might be a tree ten or
38:54
Speaker 1: fifteen feet away, it sounds like, but it's their own. Um.
38:58
Speaker 1: They look for new trees. Also, when they're searching for
39:00
Speaker 1: a female partner, the males do and they mate very quickly.
39:05
Speaker 1: It's um. It lasts just a few seconds and then
39:08
Speaker 1: the males leave the female. They don't have anything to
39:11
Speaker 1: do with the babies, which I looked up and I
39:14
Speaker 1: was like, surely they have some cute name like sloth babies,
39:17
Speaker 1: but they're just called sloth babies, which is cute. Yeah,
39:20
Speaker 1: that's pretty cute, not bad. So you know, you know,
39:23
Speaker 1: we were talking about fertilizing trees and everything. When they
39:26
Speaker 1: come down and poop once a week, I know where
39:28
Speaker 1: this is headed. So that was a big That was
39:30
Speaker 1: a big mystery, Like why would you if you're a sloth,
39:33
Speaker 1: coming down from a tree to poop uses up about
39:36
Speaker 1: eight percent of your energy. That's a lot, and it
39:39
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense because it leaves you vulnerable to predation.
39:43
Speaker 1: Some researchers say, we gotta figure it out. They're leaving
39:46
Speaker 1: scent markers on the tree to signal to other sloths
39:51
Speaker 1: come on over here. Um, I'm I'm open to to
39:55
Speaker 1: whatever freaky stuff you want to try. Sloth friend, Yeah,
39:58
Speaker 1: anal secretions, so he, like a male saut, will literally
40:02
Speaker 1: just say I'm just gonna rub my anus here and
40:05
Speaker 1: I'll meet you back there at eleven o'clock at least
40:08
Speaker 1: a little rainbow trail. I guess. So the female can
40:11
Speaker 1: also and and I heard these I looked up some
40:14
Speaker 1: videos on the female mate mating call or whatever, because
40:17
Speaker 1: they can also put out the call that they're ready. Um.
40:20
Speaker 1: And it's described as a high pitched scream here in
40:22
Speaker 1: this article, but it sounds sort of bird like, like
40:24
Speaker 1: if I was in the jungle and I heard this,
40:26
Speaker 1: I would think it was a bird. Yeah, it's not sexy, though,
40:31
Speaker 1: it's not sexiest animal. Did you get that reference right now? No?
40:36
Speaker 1: I didn't, but I appreciate you saying it was a
40:39
Speaker 1: reference Beverly Hills Cop Balki, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
40:44
Speaker 1: a little cameo on Beverly Hills Cop. He was one
40:46
Speaker 1: of the all time greats. I never watched that TV show.
40:49
Speaker 1: I know you didn't, And Chuck, you're missing out. Remember
40:52
Speaker 1: I keep going back to that piano moving episode, and
40:54
Speaker 1: it was just one of the greatest of physical comedy ever. Really. Yeah. Also,
41:00
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just bouky like. Balki and cousin Larry
41:03
Speaker 1: were really well cast their perfect foils. Seeing cousin Larry
41:09
Speaker 1: get like his last bit of patients just break and
41:12
Speaker 1: his eyes get really big because Balki did something. It
41:16
Speaker 1: was a beautiful thing to behold. Cousin Larry, was he
41:18
Speaker 1: the other guy, the main guy? Yeah, I see it.
41:21
Speaker 1: I see a DVD box it in your future. Were
41:25
Speaker 1: they actually cousins in the show? Yes? Not in real life.
41:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know the set up at all.
41:32
Speaker 1: Is it that he has this wacky cousin from another
41:34
Speaker 1: land that all of a sudden shows up on his doorstep. Yeah,
41:38
Speaker 1: Balky Bartacamas from I can't remember. They say it a
41:40
Speaker 1: bunch of times, but his he's like a central southern,
41:45
Speaker 1: central European type guy, like from the Balkans or something
41:49
Speaker 1: like Latvia or something. And he comes over to America
41:52
Speaker 1: and he stays with his cousin Larry. I have to
41:54
Speaker 1: check it out. It's funny, all the all the great
41:56
Speaker 1: TV out that's mounting on a list. I'm like, I'll
41:58
Speaker 1: have to check out Perfect Strangers right right exactly, it's
42:02
Speaker 1: on my list high up. So the woman puts out
42:06
Speaker 1: the maiden call the males. Uh. There may be competition
42:10
Speaker 1: for uh for that lady um who is in need.
42:13
Speaker 1: And if they do fight, they will fight upside down
42:17
Speaker 1: and uh like you said, it's um a slow fight,
42:21
Speaker 1: is I guess pretty cute as it turns out. Cut, Yeah,
42:24
Speaker 1: it is cute. So yeah, the males will fight to
42:27
Speaker 1: the to the hurt bruised ego, and then one of
42:30
Speaker 1: them will leaven the mail that remains will say, okay,
42:33
Speaker 1: give me a kiss, baby, and then they'll have um.
42:36
Speaker 1: They'll do it like a few times, but it's really fast.
42:40
Speaker 1: Apparently I didn't I have enough pride to not look
42:44
Speaker 1: up sloth sex, but um, from what I read, it
42:48
Speaker 1: happens very quickly. And then that's that and like like
42:50
Speaker 1: you said earlier, the male just kind of moves along
42:53
Speaker 1: like good luck with our children. And then the sloth
42:57
Speaker 1: um just station period depends on whether it's a two
43:00
Speaker 1: toad or a three toad sloth, but it's somewhere between
43:03
Speaker 1: six and eleven months. And then a sloth mom will
43:06
Speaker 1: give birth to one sloth baby and a time, no letters, Nope,
43:11
Speaker 1: just one cute little baby. So here's where it gets devastating. Um,
43:16
Speaker 1: they do nurse their young for a little while, but
43:18
Speaker 1: again that takes a lot of energy to nurse a
43:20
Speaker 1: little baby, so they only do that um for a
43:23
Speaker 1: couple of weeks before they wean that baby onto solid food.
43:27
Speaker 1: The mommy is passing along all the information that the
43:31
Speaker 1: baby needs to know about what food is and how
43:34
Speaker 1: to how to hang and live in trees. And they
43:37
Speaker 1: do cling to their mom's which is super cute for
43:40
Speaker 1: about six to eleven months, um, and then they are
43:45
Speaker 1: off on their own. Although they do this is sort
43:47
Speaker 1: of cute. They do share arrange with mom and apparently
43:50
Speaker 1: we'll stay within uh calling distance of one another. And
43:54
Speaker 1: this is all great, and I know I'm set set
43:56
Speaker 1: everyone up for heartbreak. So here it goes. If a
44:00
Speaker 1: mommy sloth is up in a tree and baby sloth
44:03
Speaker 1: slips and falls down to the ground, mommy may just
44:07
Speaker 1: leave baby there. Yeah that's like really hard for me
44:12
Speaker 1: to accept. I know, uh, because a baby sloth is cute.
44:18
Speaker 1: Adult sloths are cute enough, but a baby sloth is
44:21
Speaker 1: just like I bleach, right, so to to the idea
44:25
Speaker 1: of it just being like down there on their kid.
44:29
Speaker 1: It was a great three months we had together, but
44:32
Speaker 1: I'm not going to put myself in the at risk
44:34
Speaker 1: of being a vulnerable vulnerable to to some sort of deal. Right. Yeah,
44:40
Speaker 1: that's what they think is that the baby is just
44:42
Speaker 1: not worth it to the sloth, which is really said.
44:44
Speaker 1: I would understand that if there were sloth litters and
44:48
Speaker 1: one of them fell off, or that they didn't bond,
44:50
Speaker 1: but they clearly do bond during the piggyback phase of
44:54
Speaker 1: the baby's development. So it's they think that it's just like,
44:58
Speaker 1: it's just too much of a risk for this sloth
45:00
Speaker 1: and the law says better you than me. Kids. Yeah,
45:03
Speaker 1: this this disturbed me because I was the same as you.
45:06
Speaker 1: I was like, if there was a litter, I get it,
45:10
Speaker 1: or if they like they're highly successful, so you would
45:13
Speaker 1: think that, you know, after a nine you know, up
45:17
Speaker 1: to a year of gestation period, or if they pump
45:19
Speaker 1: babies out like every month or so, it wouldn't be
45:21
Speaker 1: a big deal. But I don't know. It just seemed
45:23
Speaker 1: like it was worth that eight percent energy and maybe
45:27
Speaker 1: a risk of panther uh feed being panther feed, right, So,
45:32
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it would if that happened, that
45:35
Speaker 1: the baby falling happened to coincide with the mom having
45:39
Speaker 1: to poop at the base of the tree, maybe the
45:41
Speaker 1: baby has a chance. Then I'm gonna save you, because
45:44
Speaker 1: I gotta take a dump right. Oh man, um, So
45:50
Speaker 1: let's just go right past that because that is still
45:52
Speaker 1: super sad for me to think about. They do live
45:54
Speaker 1: for about uh twenty years in the wild, which is
45:57
Speaker 1: pretty good for a mammal, especially when that slow and
46:00
Speaker 1: that you know, seemingly defenseless. Yeah, that's the three toad Yeah,
46:04
Speaker 1: the three toad The two toads live about twelve in captivity,
46:08
Speaker 1: though they can live thirty and forty years, uh, including
46:11
Speaker 1: our old friend Missy at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia,
46:15
Speaker 1: who just died a couple of years ago at the
46:17
Speaker 1: old age of forty three. For from what I understand,
46:20
Speaker 1: she's the oldest um known sloth to to live. Look
46:25
Speaker 1: at the fact that she did. She looked great aut
46:28
Speaker 1: to the end like Phillis diller um. And the fact
46:31
Speaker 1: that that sloths lifespans double or triple in captivity really
46:38
Speaker 1: kind of says a lot about just how how much,
46:41
Speaker 1: how how frequently they fall victim to predators, Like, that's
46:45
Speaker 1: what kills sloths is it's not fighting with other slaws,
46:48
Speaker 1: it's not falling from trees. They can withstand that it's
46:52
Speaker 1: being eaten by a predator. That's how slaws typically die,
46:55
Speaker 1: so when you take them out of that situation, they
46:57
Speaker 1: tend to live very long. But like we were being
47:00
Speaker 1: at the top of this episode, they're not necessarily happy.
47:04
Speaker 1: They get very stressed out when humans handle them, and
47:07
Speaker 1: they can actually die from stress. Um. They look happy,
47:11
Speaker 1: but they would much rather be at their home in
47:14
Speaker 1: Central and South America. Really really really really difficult to
47:18
Speaker 1: keep alive because remember, especially with the three toad sloth,
47:22
Speaker 1: they're real picky eaters, and they learn from their mothers
47:25
Speaker 1: what constitutes food, and so whatever tree that their mom's
47:30
Speaker 1: been living in, basically that specific tree growing in a
47:34
Speaker 1: rainforest in in South America, that is what constitutes food
47:39
Speaker 1: to the sloth, not anything else you could possibly come
47:42
Speaker 1: up with, And so they'll still starve and captivity pretty
47:45
Speaker 1: easily actually, especially if they're kept in captivity outside of
47:49
Speaker 1: Central or South America. Yeah, so if they do. Let's
47:52
Speaker 1: say you're a wildlife management professional and you come upon
47:58
Speaker 1: a little baby sloth that has been dropped, they will
48:00
Speaker 1: rescue that sloth if they can and try and rehabilitate it,
48:04
Speaker 1: but the goal is to get it back into the
48:06
Speaker 1: wild as soon as possible, not like, oh it's so cute.
48:09
Speaker 1: We're going to keep it around for a little while.
48:11
Speaker 1: I mean, there are clearly some in captivity, but it's
48:14
Speaker 1: not like a common zoo animal that you will see, right.
48:17
Speaker 1: There was one other thing that was kind of a
48:19
Speaker 1: quirk of their metabolism. So their mammals, which means they're
48:22
Speaker 1: warm blooded, but they're actually not really warm blooded because
48:27
Speaker 1: they produce so little energy and heat through their metabolism.
48:31
Speaker 1: They actually use the same kinds of strategies that like
48:34
Speaker 1: snakes and lizards do, where they use the sun to
48:37
Speaker 1: adjust their body temperature, which means that if it gets
48:41
Speaker 1: too hot, they can overheat and die. If it gets
48:45
Speaker 1: too cold, they can very easily freeze to death because
48:47
Speaker 1: their body temperature changes with the ambient temperature. So that,
48:51
Speaker 1: combined with the fact that their food comes from a
48:53
Speaker 1: single tree in Central America, UM, that makes them really
48:58
Speaker 1: difficult to keep alive and kept, which is why, like
49:01
Speaker 1: you're saying, they want to rehabilitate them back into the wild.
49:04
Speaker 1: That's the goal of it. Yeah, And while they are
49:06
Speaker 1: doing pretty well out there as far as their um
49:10
Speaker 1: status goes, they are of course threatened in the sense
49:15
Speaker 1: that any animal in South America and the rainforest is
49:19
Speaker 1: threatened because of deforestation. Uh, there's just you know the
49:23
Speaker 1: sad fact all animals, even if they're doing well, are
49:27
Speaker 1: going to be threatened if you're hacking through and and
49:30
Speaker 1: leveling their habitat, like is what is going on pretty much? Yeah,
49:35
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's the biggest threat is deforestation. Although
49:38
Speaker 1: for the pygmy sloth that lives on Escudo Island off
49:42
Speaker 1: of the coast of Panama and nowhere else because they're
49:46
Speaker 1: their habitat is so limited that any deforestation that happens
49:50
Speaker 1: there is put them in grave danger. Um. But it's
49:53
Speaker 1: basically cutting down the forest and then building roads through
49:56
Speaker 1: the forest because sloths will go from tree to tree
50:00
Speaker 1: on the ground sometimes, which means that when they encounter
50:03
Speaker 1: a road, it's hard to get from one tree to
50:05
Speaker 1: the other aside from on the ground, So a sloth
50:08
Speaker 1: crossing the road is probably not a good gamble for
50:11
Speaker 1: the sloth. But the more roads we build through the rainforest,
50:14
Speaker 1: the more sloths to get hit by cars, which is
50:18
Speaker 1: about the saddest thing you could hit by a car
50:21
Speaker 1: with a car. Yeah, and here's uh, you know, you
50:24
Speaker 1: always hear about um like a movie medicine man, like
50:27
Speaker 1: the cure for cancer maybe in this one leaf in
50:30
Speaker 1: the middle of a forest somewhere in a jungle. They
50:33
Speaker 1: may not have the key to cancer in a sloth.
50:35
Speaker 1: But the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute did collect fungi samples,
50:40
Speaker 1: you know, the algae that grows in their fur. Uh.
50:42
Speaker 1: And this is of the three toed sloth. And they
50:45
Speaker 1: found that some of these samples from the sloth coat
50:48
Speaker 1: helped fight against malaria or the parasite that causes malaria
50:52
Speaker 1: and um chagas disease, which I know we've talked about.
50:56
Speaker 1: It's another tropical parasitic disease, stop your heart, mersa, cholera
51:01
Speaker 1: sam and ela uh. And they were also active against
51:05
Speaker 1: human breast cancer cells. So pretty amazing, yeah, which I
51:09
Speaker 1: mean like that's the stuff that they found in the
51:12
Speaker 1: algae growing on sloth fur, which, yeah, that is astounding.
51:15
Speaker 1: It's awesome. So we're all gonna be chewing on spots
51:18
Speaker 1: in the future. Well yeah, don't say that. They'll be alive.
51:24
Speaker 1: You don't have to kill him or anything. Gently suck
51:27
Speaker 1: on their fur. Okay, okay, um, you got anything else?
51:32
Speaker 1: I got nothing? Well, if you want to know more
51:35
Speaker 1: about sloths, there's a whole internet out there about them,
51:38
Speaker 1: although we did a pretty good job covering at Chuck
51:40
Speaker 1: if I do say so ourselves. Um, well, since I
51:44
Speaker 1: said Internet, that means it's time for listener man, I'm
51:50
Speaker 1: gonna call this politics on your show. Hey, guys, love
51:55
Speaker 1: the show. I've been listening for several years now, and
51:57
Speaker 1: I've learned lots of good stuff. And you've also introduced
51:59
Speaker 1: me to the end of the world with Josh Clark
52:02
Speaker 1: and movie crush. Yeah, how about that? All right? Will
52:06
Speaker 1: goes deep? Uh? And he says this recently, I was
52:08
Speaker 1: looking through vieusing comments on the show on Apple Podcasts.
52:11
Speaker 1: I saw a number of people making critical comments about
52:14
Speaker 1: how you share your opinions on religion and politics too often. Um.
52:18
Speaker 1: I am a politically conservative and religious guy, and I
52:20
Speaker 1: want to encourage you to keep sharing your opinions. I
52:23
Speaker 1: live in a smallish Midwestern town in a red state
52:26
Speaker 1: where I grew up and spent most of my life.
52:28
Speaker 1: Most of the people in my orbit either go to
52:30
Speaker 1: church with me and my family or hold similar conservative views.
52:34
Speaker 1: Your opinions serve as an important function of bringing some alternate,
52:38
Speaker 1: alternative perspectives that sometimes challenge my opinions and encourage me
52:42
Speaker 1: to reevaluate certain positions and views. Please keep interjecting your views, guys.
52:47
Speaker 1: Too many of us automatically dismiss any opinions, and unfortunately
52:50
Speaker 1: people who's used contrast with their own. UM. I used
52:54
Speaker 1: to work for an administrator. He would frequently say, if
52:57
Speaker 1: we're all thinking the same thing, then some of us
52:59
Speaker 1: aren't thinking that sounds like something. That's a really great
53:02
Speaker 1: that's a great poster. That's good. That's that's the first
53:07
Speaker 1: album's title for Mouth Farts debut. Keep a boy, you
53:14
Speaker 1: got the great work, and keep offering your views along
53:16
Speaker 1: with your well research and fascinating topics, well seasoned with
53:19
Speaker 1: witty humor and hilarious banter. Regards Will Well, that was
53:24
Speaker 1: a great, very nice, very kind email, like Will saw
53:28
Speaker 1: something probably said. These guys probably know about this, and
53:32
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that they know it's cool.
53:34
Speaker 1: So thanks Will, as much appreciated. UM, if you like
53:39
Speaker 1: to join in with Will's course, we love that. I
53:43
Speaker 1: would also be interested to hear other people who want
53:46
Speaker 1: to write in and explain why we shouldn't share our
53:48
Speaker 1: politics or views, because I'm I'm very curious to hear
53:51
Speaker 1: the other side as well. It makes me a centriest
53:53
Speaker 1: fairness do right. You can go to stuff you Should
53:58
Speaker 1: Know dot com and find all of our so links there,
54:00
Speaker 1: and you can also send us a good old fashioned email,
54:03
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54:06
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54:12
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