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How Sloths Work · Stuff You Should Know

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