Why Do Sloths Poop on the Ground?

Fitz (0:00)

Hi, my name is Fitz, I'm 7 and a 3 quarters. And I have a question. Why do sloths go all the way to the ground? Why do sloths go to the pool? Why do sloths poop in the sky?

Mike Bennett (0:40)

Fitz, you came to the right place. We're here at The Zooquarium Podcast, where we get to find out together why sloths don't poop in the sky, and instead, poop on the ground. We have Chanel here, our resident animal expert. Chanel, I'm just gonna throw it straight to you, because I don't have an answer.

Chanel Hason (0:57)

I love when we get to talk about poop. That's amazing. Who doesn't love to talk about that? First, let's talk a little bit about sloths themselves. Mike, do you have any guess what animal is most closely related to a sloth? I'll give you a hint. They like to eat a lot of ants.

Mike Bennett (1:15)

That was a very helpful hint. I'm just gonna say anteater.

Chanel Hason (1:18)

That's correct. Wow, yes. So sloths are most closely related to ant eaters. They have poor vision and poor hearing. So they depend on their sense of smell and touch to find their food and what do they eat? Any guesses?

Mike Bennett (1:35)

What do sloths eat? I'm gonna say ants.

Chanel Hason (1:38)

No. But that was a good guess because they are related to ant eaters. But they like to eat just twigs and leaves and buds because they live most of their lives up in the tree canopy. So that's the closest thing for them to eat and snack on. But they have a really low metabolic rate, which is why maybe they only poop once a week. So they can store about a third of their body weight in feces, poop in their body. So that's probably also a trigger for them to go down to the bottom of the tree canopy to release themselves. But scientists don't really know why they do that. So some guesses are that it releases pheromones at the bottom of the tree for other sloths to know if there's a sloth up in that tree. It can be keeping their habitat clean so they don't maybe want to poop where they have to walk around all day or climb around up in the tree canopy. But it is a very dangerous thing for them to do because they are such a slow moving animal. They are prone to predation. So animals try to eat them when they get to the bottom of the rainforest floor. Any guesses what might be a natural predator for sloths, Mike?

Mike Bennett (2:55)

Well, I guess if you spend your entire week doubling your own body weight with poop, anything could eat a sloth. But there's some scary critters in sloth habitats. I'm sure there's a cat of some kind that would love to eat a sloth.

Chanel Hason (3:10)

Yeah, definitely. There's leopards, ocelots, even a harpy eagle, which is a really beautiful bird. If you haven't seen one before, they also try and eat sloths. So there's a lot of scary things. So they get to the bottom of the tree and they actually do something called a poop dance. They just shake their body back and forth like they're jamming to their favorite song and maybe that helps them, their metabolism get going for them to poop. Scientists don't really know why they do the poop dance, but I like to think that maybe they're just so excited that they made it all the way down to the tree to release themselves.

And then the three toad sloths actually use their tail to kind of make a little hole for them to poop in. And then the two toad sloths, they actually kind of just use their booty. They just kind of plump there on the bottom of the tree and then poop there.

Mike Bennett (4:11)

And that's to like hide the evidence that they exist in the canopy, I guess. Yeah. Right? Okay. Or are they just very clean animals?

Chanel Hason (4:19)

I mean, they are actually pretty dirty. There's algae that grows in their fur because they are such a slow moving animal in the tropical climate. Algae grows in there. And actually there's something called a sloth moth that lives in their fur and kind of hides in that algae. And so every time they go down to poop, these sloth moths, say that 10 times fast, actually go to the poop and lay their eggs. And then the larvae come out of the poop. And then once they become a moth, then they fly up that tree to find the sloth, where they came from.