Meet the Sloths
Pembrokeshire’s Folly Farm has been busy building a new sloth home with biomass heating in the tropical trails area. Now it’s all finished, ageing sloths Lightcap, 36, and Tuppee, 26, are being looked after there by their keeper, Becky Dyson.
The news prompted us at Pembrokeshire.Online to find out a little more about these apparently lazy creatures. We were quite frankly amazed. Not least about their digestive abilities.
Sloths are tree-dwelling mammals and all five living species inhabit the tropical forests of South and Central America. They spend almost all of their time hanging from branches and vines.
Two-toed sloths have huge stomachs with four chambers, supported by 46 ribs, but their metabolic rate is so slow that they can take 30 days to digest a leaf. They are reliant upon environmental conditions to regulate body heat, and if they get too cold, the special microbes that live in there can die, and the sloths, even if their stomach is full, will not be able to digest anything and will starve to death.
Sloths can poo a third of their body weight in their once-a-week toilet visits. They travel to a particular tree and dig a hole at the base where they leave their deposits. Most sloth experts believe that this is related to communication and will probably reveal when a female is ready to mate.
When they fight, it is usually males fighting over a female and their intention is for one to knock his rival out of the tree. Experts say that all sloths are anatomically designed to fall out of the trees and can fall over 100ft without injury.
Generally these creatures fall out of the trees fairly regularly despite their incredible strength; they are about three times stronger than a human, and their ability to lock their hands and feet so they can hang upside down for long periods, has been known to continue even after death. From birth they are strong enough to lift themselves upward by one arm.
After they give birth, sloth mothers will carry their young for about a year on their chests. The babies are strong enough to cling on, but if they do fall, mums will make their way down to the forest floor to find them and carry them back to safety. This can take some time and baby sloths have been assumed abandoned in such circumstances.
Interesting? We thought so.
2021 opening times for Folly Farm:
Subject to Covid-19 guidance.
- 26 April – 30 September, 10am – 5pm, every day
- 01 October – 22 October, 10am – 4pm, every day
- 23 October – 31 October, 10am – 5pm, every day
- 06 November – 19 December, 10am – 4pm, Saturdays and Sundays only
- 20 December – 31 December, closed.
Telephone number: 01834 812731
Email: info@folly-farm.co.uk
Address: Folly Farm, Begelly, Kilgetty, Pembrokeshire SA68 0XA
