Why Are Sloths' Toilet Habits So Dangerous?

Sloths only defecate once a week or so, and more sloths die during the process than at any other time. Learn why in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel Bam here. Sloths are known for their incredibly
slow moving natures, but it turns out that such sluggishness
also carries over into their bathroom habits, so much so
that they only defecate every five to seven days on average,
and actually lose up to one third of their body

(00:22):
weight in a single movement. The stool is pushed out
and one fell swoop so impressive that horrified and or
transfixed bystanders can watch the animals abdomen shrink. We spoke
via email with Sarah Kennedy, co founder of the Sloth
Conservation Foundation based in the United Kingdom. She said, if
you've ever seen a sloth pooh, you could only ever

(00:43):
describe it as pure bliss. They tip their heads back
and smile. But the week long delay between bowel movements
is not even the strangest thing about sloth pooping habits.
You see. Sloughs are arboreal creatures, which means they live, work,
and play high up in the trees. They're chosen habitats
are the rain and cloud forests of Central and South America.

(01:05):
Most other arboreal animals like monkeys poop from the trees,
but not sloths. Instead, they make a slow descent from
the canopy to do their business at the base of
the trees, and this despite the fact that it's quite perilous.
Kennedy said, this behavior puts them threat to a lot
of predators like jungle cats, and wastes a lot of
their precious energy, which they don't have much of. It

(01:28):
turns out that more than half of all sloth deaths
occur during potty time, when these creatures are so vulnerable
to predators. The process comes at a serious price. Zoologist
and Sloth Conservation Foundation founder Becky Cliff wrote in a
blog post a slot's entire lifestyle is based around avoiding
detection and using as little energy as possible. It takes

(01:50):
a sloth an entire month to digest just one leaf,
meaning they don't have much wiggle room when it comes
to expending energy. The laborious process of going up and
down the tree is compounded by the actual pooping process.
Sloths do a little dance at the base of the
tree to create a hole for the feces, and then
shake their hind quarters once more to cover it up.

(02:12):
This process requires you guessed it plenty of precious energy.
A lot of theories have been put forth about why
sloths feel the need to expend so much effort and
expose themselves to so much danger just to toilet. One
theory is it sloth moths, which live in sloth hair,
actually lay their eggs in the feces during the long

(02:32):
poop process. Then once they hatch and mature in their
carefully prepared environment, they fly up to take residence in
the host sloths fur. Many experts, though, are skeptical of
this explanation because the sloths don't particularly benefit from the behavior,
and nature isn't generally known for its selfless generosity. More likely,
but as yet unproven, is that the strange behavior comes

(02:55):
back to reproduction, as it so often does when living
things are involved. Explained, the main reason is probably so
that other sloths can find them, a particularly males looking
for females. Usually the slaws come down every five to
seven days, but when females are in heat it's every day,
so it's likely to be mostly to do with reproduction. Indeed,

(03:16):
it appears at sloth poop says a lot more about
the animal than merely what they've been nothing on. Cliff wrote,
pheromones present in the uinin feces can provide a lot
of important information about the individual animal. If the sloths
just let everything go from the canopy, these messages would
be easily lost. We have heaps of data showing some
really interesting patterns between a female's estra cycle and the

(03:39):
patterns of defecation. We'll be waiting patiently for the answer
to this mystery, because if observing sloss teaches anything, it's patients.
Today's episode was written by Aliya Hoyt and produced by
Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works. For
more on this and lots of other moving topics, visit

(04:01):
our home planet, how stuff Works dot com. M