Mammals · Pilosa · Bradypodidae

Pale-Throated Three-Toed Sloth

Bradypus tridactylus

Least Concern

The species is abundant and widely distributed; it faces no significant short-term risk. See full glossary

The pale-throated three-toed sloth is a three-toed sloth of northern South America, with a pale throat and face and a darker dorsal patch in the males. It eats almost exclusively the leaves of a small number of tree species, and its digestion is so slow that a single meal can take weeks to pass through the gut. It moves very little and very slowly, which reduces both its energy expenditure and its detectability to harpy eagles.

Weight

3 kg – 6.5 kg

Size

50 cm – 75 cm

Lifespan

30 years

Diet

Herbivore

Feeds mainly on plants.

Activity

Irregular activity

Active at irregular times, by day or night depending on circumstances.

Social structure

Solitary

Lives and hunts alone, joining others only to breed.

Sighting difficulty

Easy

RainforestHerbivore Variable activity Solitary Rainforest Mammal

7countries 11parks2same family

Fun facts

It comes down to the ground roughly once a week, always to defecate at the foot of a tree, at the most dangerous moment of its life: most deaths by predation happen during that visit.
Its fur harbours algae and moths that live nowhere else: the moths use the weekly visits to the ground to lay eggs in the dung, and their larvae later return to the sloth, in one of the strangest symbiotic cycles in the animal kingdom.

Life cycle & biology

Skeleton type: Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (mammal)
Habitat & environment: Canopy of lowland rainforest of the Guianas and the northern Amazon
Sexual maturity: 4.5 years
Gestation / incubation: 4.6 months
Litter / clutch size: 1

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradypus_tridactylus