Slowest Animal on the Planet

The Sloth

Native to Central and South America, the sloth is the slowest animal on the planet. Sloths move extremely slowly and only when it is necessary.

Andrew Mason

A sloth's legs and feet are shaped to hang from trees, so it’s actually hard for sloths to walk on the ground. They can’t run or stand upright on their feet. It would take a sloth nearly a month to walk one mile! Sloths don’t do much walking on the ground, though — they spend their lives hanging upside down in trees. They eat, sleep, and even have babies upside down !Although generally found, with the help of long claws, hanging upside down from branches, sloths will occasionally make a trip down to the ground. Once on ground the sloth, generally, moves at 0.5 to 1 foot per minute with their maximum speed being at 5 feet per minute.

Although sloths sometimes eat small insects and lizards, the sloth mainly eats vegetation and is considered an omnivore. Most at home in tropical rainforests, sloths are now having to adapt to city living with the ever growing urban areas. In rainforests sloths spend most of their lives hanging from tree branches and even dying in tree branches.

Sloths have been found dead still hanging from the branches. However, with more sloths now venturing into urban areas, these slow creatures are now facing higher death rates and the Maned Three-toed Sloth is now been placed on the 'endangered species' list.