What Do Sloths Eat?

Written by Kirstin Harrington
Published: January 2, 2023
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The majority of their lives are spent dangling passively or gradually navigating among tree branches with their long, hooked claws. All sloths in the present world are suspensory mammals that live in trees. Everything takes place in the trees, including eating, sleeping, resting, mating, and giving birth. 

Even sloths, though, occasionally have to leave the safety of their treetop homes and make their way down to the ground. Have you ever wondered what on earth these creatures consume? If they move so slowly, their diet must be interesting as well! Let’s talk about everything there is to know about sloths, their diet, and more! 

What Does a Sloth Eat?

sloth eating a leaf

The Cecropia tree is symbolically linked to sloths, and reforestation initiatives that support sloth habitat restoration often include these trees as a key component.

©Damsea/Shutterstock.com

These curious animals are folivores. This means they prefer to eat leaves and other foliage. Sloths are folivores throughout the board. The two-fingered sloth has a more diversified diet that sometimes contains both fruit and seed pods, in contrast to the three-fingered sloth, which primarily consumes leaves and rarely seed pods. 

As a species, sloths consume the leaves of over 90 species of trees, although any given individual typically alternates between six to twelve distinct species. These tendencies are passed down to them from their moms. 

The Cecropia tree is symbolically linked to sloths, and reforestation initiatives that support sloth habitat restoration often include these trees as a key component. Sloths require much more variety in their surroundings and diets than this, though.

Ecologists have long assumed that sloths obtain all the water they require from the vegetation they devour. There are few recorded instances of either of the two sloth genera consuming water in the wild. 

As a result of global warming, rainforests are generally getting hotter and dryer. In addition, due to greater light accessing the forest, fragmented forests in metropolitan areas typically have hotter understory temperatures. According to experts, this is forcing urban sloths to move farther and consume more water.

What Do Captive Sloths Eat?

In zoos far from their natural tropical rainforest habitats, many captive sloths live. Since it can be very difficult to provide sloths with fresh, natural foliage for their meals, many groups simply feed them whatever plants are accessible, including vegetables, particularly root vegetables, and flora from non-tropical climes, which they have not adapted to consume.

Two-fingered sloths kept in captivity typically eat cooked carrots, eggs, wildflowers, celery, bean sprouts, and bananas on their plates. For sloths, this diet contains far too much sugar, which can result in diseases including heart disease and diabetes. 

It is hypothesized that this has a detrimental effect on the health and lifespans of sloths. This won’t be proven until researchers can more accurately assess wild sloth lifespans and contrast them with sloths raised in captivity.

How Much Do Sloths Eat?

sloth

Like they do with everything else, sloths consume leaves slowly. It can take a sloth up to 30 days for a single leaf to travel through its system.

©phortun/Shutterstock.com

A sloth does not consume a lot of food every day. Every three-fingered sloth consumes about 2.5 ounces of leaves on average in dry weight each day. This is just a third of howler monkeys’ daily food consumption. This is despite the fact that they consume a similar variety of leaves, share the same environment, and are a similar size to sloths. 

The fact that there is little difference in food consumption between individuals and a little increase on warmer days suggests that sloths’ eating patterns are highly tailored to their natural ecosystem.

How Do Sloths Digest Food?

Because leaves were not developed on trees to be consumed, but rather to absorb and process sunlight, they have extremely resistant cell walls that are rich in cellulose. Additionally, mature leaves can contain compounds that accumulate with time and render them toxic if consumed in sufficient numbers. 

In comparison to other food sources, leaves are also quite low in calories. Folivores must have certain unusual dietary habits and specialized digestion in order to consume enough foliage to fulfill their energy requirements.

Sloths prefer fresh, new leaves that often grow on the ends of branches. This is because they are free of poisons and rough cellulose. As they wander from tree to tree, they devour all kinds of fresh leaves. As a result, it is unlikely that any toxins found in one variety of leaves will accumulate over time in the bodies of the sloths. 

The nutrients found in leaves are not immediately digested by sloths. Rather, they have a very intricate gastrointestinal system that allows the sloths’ intestinal flora to digest and disintegrate the leaves, providing them with the calories and nutrients they need.

Like they do with everything else, sloths consume leaves slowly. It can take a sloth up to 30 days for a single leaf to travel through its system. This is, predictably, the mammal with the slowest rate of digestion. 

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The photo featured at the top of this post is © tristan tan/Shutterstock.com


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About the Author

Kirstin is a writer at A-Z Animals primarily covering animals, news topics, fun places, and helpful tips. Kirstin has been writing on a variety of topics for over five years. She has her real estate license, along with an associates degree in another field. A resident of Minnesota, Kirstin treats her two cats (Spook and Finlay) like the children they are. She never misses an opportunity to explore a thrift store with a coffee in hand, especially if it’s a cold autumn day!

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