A Sloth Spies On The King
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The king's son have I landed by himself; Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs In an odd angle of the isle and sitting, His arms in this sad knot. PROSPERO Of the king's ship The mariners say how thou hast disposed And all the rest o' the fleet. ARIEL Safely in harbour Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once. Sloths need to be skilled climbers in order to survive in the wild. At the facility, the baby sloths learn how to climb on a rocking chair, which mimics the movement of a tree. Cacahuate is a Spirit sloth who appears in the Disney Channel animated series Elena of Avalor. He is Mateo's Spirit Guide who once felt incapable of carrying out his job until some encouragement and determination built up his confidence in becoming a good Spirit Guide.
Join Britannica's Publishing Partner Program and our community of experts to gain a global audience for your work!Sloth, (suborder Phyllophaga), tree-dwelling mammal noted for its slowness of movement. All five living species are limited to the lowland tropical forests of South and Central America, where they can be found high in the forest canopy sunning, resting, or feeding on leaves. Although two-toed sloths (family Megalonychidae) are capable of climbing and positioning themselves vertically, they spend almost all of their time hanging horizontally, using their large hooklike extremities to move along branches and vines. Three-toed sloths (family Bradypodidae) move in the same way but often sit in the forks of trees rather than hanging from branches.
What kind of animal is a sloth?
Sloths are mammals. They are part of the order Pilosa, which is also home to anteaters. Together with armadillos, sloths and anteaters form the magnorder Xenarthra.
How many types of sloths are there?
A total of five species of sloths exist: the pygmy three-toed sloth, the maned sloth, the pale-throated three-toed sloth, the brown-throated three-toed sloth, and Linnaeus's two-toed sloth. All sloths are either two-toed or three-toed.
Where do sloths live?
Sloths live in the lowland tropical areas of South and Central America. They spend most of their life in the forest canopy. Two-toed sloths tend to hang horizontally from branches, while three-toed sloths often sit in the forks of trees.
What do sloths eat?
Sloths are omnivores. Because they spend most of their time in trees, they like to munch on leaves, twigs, flowers, and other foliage, though some species may eat insects and other small animals.
Why are sloths so slow?
Sloths are slow because of their diet and metabolic rate. They eat a low-calorie diet consisting exclusively of plants, and they metabolize at a rate that is only 40–45 percent of what is expected for mammals of their weight. Sloths must move slowly to conserve energy.
Sloths have long legs, stumpy tails, and rounded heads with inconspicuous ears. Although they possess colour vision, sloths’ eyesight and hearing are not very acute; orientation is mainly by touch. The limbs are adapted for suspending the body rather than supporting it. As a result, sloths are completely helpless on the ground unless there is something to grasp. Even then, they are able only to drag themselves along with their claws. They are surprisingly good swimmers. Generally nocturnal, sloths are solitary and are aggressive toward others of the same sex.
Sloths have large multichambered stomachs and an ability to tolerate strong chemicals from the foliage they eat. The leafy food is digested slowly; a fermenting meal may take up to a week to process. The stomach is constantly filled, its contents making up about 30 percent of the sloth’s weight. Sloths descend to the ground at approximately six-day intervals to urinate and defecate (see Sidebar: A moving habitat). Physiologically, sloths are heterothermic—that is, they have imperfect control over their body temperature. Normally ranging between 25 and 35 °C (77 and 95 °F), body temperature may drop to as low as 20 °C (68 °F). At this temperature the animals become torpid. Although heterothermicity makes sloths very sensitive to temperature change, they have thick skin and are able to withstand severe injuries.
All sloths were formerly classified in the same family (Bradypodidae), but two-toed sloths have been found to be so different from three-toed sloths that they are now classified in a separate family (Megalonychidae).
Three-toed sloths
The three-toed sloth (family Bradypodidae) is also called the ai in Latin America because of the high-pitched cry it produces when agitated. All four species belong to the same genus, Bradypus, and the coloration of their short facial hair bestows them with a perpetually smiling expression. The brown-throated three-toed sloth (B. variegatus) occurs in Central and South America from Honduras to northern Argentina; the pale-throated three-toed sloth (B. tridactylus) is found in northern South America; the maned sloth (B. torquatus) is restricted to the small Atlantic forest of southeastern Brazil; and the pygmy three-toed sloth (B. pygmaeus) inhabits the Isla Escudo de Veraguas, a small Caribbean island off the northwestern coast of Panama.
Although most mammals have seven neck vertebrae, three-toed sloths have eight or nine, which permits them to turn their heads through a 270° arc. The teeth are simple pegs, and the upper front pair are smaller than the others; incisor and true canine teeth are lacking. Adults weigh only about 4 kg (8.8 pounds), and the young weigh less than 1 kg (2.2 pounds), possibly as little as 150–250 grams (about 5–9 ounces) at birth. (The birth weight of B. torquatus, for example, is only 300 grams [about 11 ounces].) The head and body length of three-toed sloths averages 58 cm (23 inches), and the tail is short, round, and movable. The forelimbs are 50 percent longer than the hind limbs; all four feet have three long, curved sharp claws. Sloths’ coloration makes them difficult to spot, even though they are very common in some areas. The outer layer of shaggy long hair is pale brown to gray and covers a short, dense coat of black-and-white underfur. The outer hairs have many cracks, perhaps caused by the algae living there. The algae give the animals a greenish tinge, especially during the rainy season. Sexes look alike in the maned sloth, but in the other species males have a large patch (speculum) in the middle of the back that lacks overhair, thus revealing the black dorsal stripe and bordering white underfur, which is sometimes stained yellow to orange. The maned sloth gets its name from the long black hair on the back of its head and neck.
Three-toed sloths, although mainly nocturnal, may be active day or night but spend only about 10 percent of their time moving at all. They sleep either perched in the fork of a tree or hanging from a branch, with all four feet bunched together and the head tucked in on the chest. In this posture the sloth resembles a clump of dead leaves, so inconspicuous that it was once thought these animals ate only the leaves of cecropia trees because in other trees it went undetected. Research has since shown that they eat the foliage of a wide variety of other trees and vines. Locating food by touch and smell, the sloth feeds by hooking a branch with its claws and pulling it to its mouth. Sloths’ slow movements and mainly nocturnal habits generally do not attract the attention of predators such as jaguars and harpy eagles. Normally, three-toed sloths are silent and docile, but if disturbed they can strike out furiously with the sharp foreclaws.
Reproduction is seasonal in the brown- and pale-throated species; the maned sloth may breed throughout the year. Reproduction in pygmy three-toed sloths, however, has not yet been observed. A single young is born after less than six months’ gestation. Newborn sloths cling to the mother’s abdomen and remain with the mother until at least five months of age. Three-toed sloths are so difficult to maintain in captivity that little is known about their breeding behaviour and other aspects of their life history.
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the notion of acedia means that a man does not, in the last resort, give the consent of his will to his own being; that beneath the dynamic activity of his existence, he is still not at one with himself
…..….. -Joseph Pieper
When autumn came, my grandfather set up
Behind a metal desk in his garage,
With slender ballpeen hammer and curved pick
….. To hull and crack
The acrid mound of tennis-ball-sized husks
From which he freed those gnarled piths of black walnuts
Gathered beneath our trees the weeks before
….. And meant for this.
Other men I have known had other passions,
To sell insurance or run clothing stores,
To coach a squad of boys to pitch and hit
….. In summer league.
And we are so impressed by excellence,
By concentration, how it shuts the world out
And brushes off distraction with a rudeness
….. Quite accidental,
That some have thought that this was our vocation,
The answer to the question why we’re here,
And whose unceasing cultivation is
….. Our happiness.
But even as a boy, when I would see,
Stowed in my idle laziness, the girls
Solicitous of every teacher’s praise,
….. Those busy bodies
Who volunteered to cook hot meals for old folks,
To tutor after school, or paint bright signs
For spirit week, I’d spy their flitting ache
….. Of restlessness.
A Sloth Spies On The King Of Queens
And though I felt rebuked by their good will
And knew my brooding silence in the lunchroom
Was also discontent, if not distraction,
….. And marked for shame,
I nonetheless thought they had fled the question
Posed by their selves, or pushed it off beyond
Tomorrow with assurance that they had
….. Done what was asked.
And later, when I saw what Pascal wrote
About the king possessed of everything
Who would not have himself be left to sit
….. In solitude,
For fear his roving mind’s eye might return
Upon the glowering emptiness within
And there, cut off from glittering abundance,
….. Find gnawing misery,
I knew that man, contemptible and great,
Could build a far-flung empery from worry,
An earnest moral sentence from a lie
….. He tells himself;
And knew reflective anguish, in being thought,
Resembled more than humming outward deeds
What both too easily parody: that peace
….. We fear to seek.
For it is silly, Aristotle says,
To think the gods live their eternity
Fiddling about with war or sex or money.
….. They are all stillness.
A Sloth Spies On The Kingdom
No less must we, who crack our meat from shells
And earn commissions sweating at the office,
Set by our deeds at last for that pure act
….. Of god-like rest.
James Matthew Wilson
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