Attention world. If you can make it to America, then come see us. We are going out on the road for s Y s K Live again, and we are going to start the whole thing off in Chicago on July, that's right. And if you can't make it to America, maybe make it to Canada, because we're gonna be in Toronto in the next night and Fourth Music Hall. Then in August, we're gonna do a couple of dates at the Wilburn Boston in October twenty nine, in Portland Mainz Lovely State Theater on August, and then we're going to be heading down to Florida. We're gonna be at Plaza Live on October nine, and then the next night we're going to be in New Orleans at the Civic Theater. That's right, and then we're gonna round it out in Brooklyn October five at the Bellhouse. Yep, So come see us. You can get tickets and info at s Y s K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's guest producer Josh t over there thinking about the number twenty three, just sitting there thinking about until that's right, I forgot that. Yeah, he's in Illuminati stuff if I remember correctly. So he's also look look at this guy. He is so good, Chuck. He knows to just sit there and keep quiet, even though he's dying inside right now to talk about the number twenty three. Uh if I had just pulled out some random show from like our archive from years ago, could you see who the producer was? Oh? I don't know, let's let's give it a try. Um geez, Now I have to think of a show that we did years ago. Uh. Well, since we're doing an animal show today, the only I can think of his animals elephants, Jarny that long ago, probably Jerry All, how about this? Can you name any shows that other guest producers were on? I'll the top of your head. Um, No, this game turns so lame so fast. I feel like we can we Well, Matt Frederick's too busy these days. But we can't have Matt anymore in here, because all Matt would do is sit there and like not his head like huh yeah, yeah, either that or his hands would be clasped together with this look of sheer joy on his face just to hear us talk. It was great, It made it. It It made recording that much better. In the old days, Matt's older and more cynical. Now he doesn't care anymore about us. Right, He's true released into the forest like a baby sloth, right, which is good. That's what you want to do with either Matt Frederick or a baby sloth. You don't want to keep them in captivity because sloths don't do very well in captivity. Matt does okay in captivity, he's fine, but a sloth not nearly as well as what Matt Frederick can do it captivity. Uh. Yeah, and you were watching just before we recorded. Everyone should know Josh was watching the twenty eight million view YouTube video of Kristen Bell. Uh. Can we call her friend of the show? Sure? I mean she's probably not going to write in to object to it, so yeah, we could. We could call her that. She's the stuff you should know listener or has been over the years as us. Her husband Mr Dak Shepherd, who was also a movie Crush guest um and he has his own podcast to Armchair expert. Yeah, he's crushing it right out of the games. Those are good. Good podcasts, actually, don't know if you listen to this are good. So she very famously he brought her a sloth on her birthday and she went on Ellen and they showed video and it's still just one of the great videos you can ever watch. It is. It's very sweet. She's like having a meltdown and fully fully melting down. Yeah, like crying, like sobbing because she's so excited that there's a sloth in her house, because this is something she's she's wanted to meet a sloth like for her whole life and now she gets to. Yeah. And I watched it again today too, because after doing this research, I was like, wait a minute, was she holding a sloth because that's not good? And uh, it showed a picture and she's not. The sloth is on its little perch and she's very respectfully next to the sloth, exactly how it should be. If there's any reason that that kept Kristen Bell from being America's Sweetheart, which I can't think of one that that erased it right there, just knowing how to be around a sloth when you have meltdowns at the idea of being around a slot that's that's some serious self control and for the benefit of the animal, that's great stuff. Yeah, not touching the animal and uh literally offering for me to change my daughter's diaper in her restaurant booth. Yeah, that's right, because she said the bathroom was dirty. She's a class act. Class act. So, Charles, you mentioned um elephants. We did an elephant episode and that that it's similar to the to the whole sloth thing. Like you see a sloth, especially if you see a sloth in captivity at a zoo or something like that, you're like, well, I want to carry it around like a baby or something like that. It's a sloth. It's one of the cutest things on the planet. But you don't want to do that. Slous don't really deal with captivity very well. Although they can live way longer in captivity, they're not necessarily happy. But I was thinking one of the things, one of the reasons why people seem to think that they are happy or would want to be picked up is because, at least among one type of sloth, they're always smiling. They're smiling, which makes them super cute. They also have a mullet. That's the the three toad Brady Puss sloth Um. They have a mullet and they are always smiling. But if you look, it's just the coloring on their face that happens to resemble a smile there there. They have so little muscle mass that they don't have the capability of smiling making their face smile. It's just the colorings on their fur. Yeah, which is can be very misleading to us dumb humans because they can be scared or stressed out of their mind and it still looks like they are just chilling and smiling. Right, Look it smiling. It loves it when I juggle it with two bowling balls in a flaming a flaming pitch fork. Oh, I could come up with. I wondering where that was going. Have you ever seen a flaming pitchfork? Is something only in the Simpsons. So let's get into this because the cuteness is just it's cute overload. When it comes to slows, they are ridiculously cute. Um. Their whole vibe is just you know, right up my alley at least sure not that I'm lazy mellow and but well, you know me, the real me isn't super mellow, but I like to pretend to be sure, I strive to be You get the sloth vibe. Yeah, it's it's an aspirational state, sloth nous. Yeah. So I love. The very first sentence of this research says they are highly successful, which kind of cracked me up when I read it because I pictured slaws of course in business suits, like running a company. Right, can you hurry it up? I have no time for this. But what that means is is that for a very very very long time, slows generally have flourished in the world. Yeah, they think that they probably evolved. Um. They're part of a group or a family or some taxonomic designation called um zenn athara and zenithara um are It's it's like the weirdo group that's sloths and eaters. Um. I think that's ardillos Sure, depending on whether you want to be classy or not or sound tough. Sure, zen arthrow Okay, I'll go with that. But it's sloths and eaters armadillos um. Pretty much any odd um animal you can think of would would fall into zan arthur what what what did you say, zan Arthur Arthur. So they all kind of formed together in isolation on what was once an island South Americas as long back as eighty million years ago. What yeh is an island? Yeah, you know, like the whole continental drifts and all that stuff, and it decided to make friends with Central America. Yeah, and and higher sea levels that kind of thing. When the sea levels got locked up in ice, or when a lot of seawater got locked up in ice, the land bridge that is Central America came along and said, hey, build some zigarattes on me. So they are highly successful. Uh, they are very slow moving, like everyone knows. Um, they are in Central and South America. Still no surprise there. Um. And like you said, there are two kinds there. The two toad, uh caleppus. I was going coleo Opus colo opus colo opus rhymes bosephus. Okay, that's a good way to remember it. Uh. And then the little tom Brady Puss, which is the three toad. But it's a bit of a misnomer because the two toad has three toes but two fingers, right. That's how they're classified or separated from one another. The two toad or the three toad right, so um, And technically I read somewhere Chuck that they actually don't have legs. There's a four armed creature. Was that the designation four arms? Yeah, from what I saw, But they really just pay attention to how many fingers are on the four arms or the four limbs what we would think of as their arms, their front arms, but they're really all four arms. And the way that I kept um the two separated, so two toed is colo opus, three toad is Bradypuss, is that I thought the Brady bunch has more kids, so that Brady has more toes. And it's been working all day. Frankly, that's pretty good. That's the second pneumonic device you've dropped in the first like ten minutes of the show. Yeah, what do you think You're doing? Great? Good as long as it's working. So uh. The two toad guys and ladies, they roam um as far as laws go, a pretty great distance. Uh. They can forage and ranges up to three d and fifty acres, whereas the three toad guys they only have a range of about thirteen acres. And then there's the cutest of all sloth, the pygmy sloth that are just on one one little island off the coast of Panama, right, and they're actually critically endangered as far as they are so cute, it's ridiculous. But like, as close as the sloths are, like, there's not that many differences besides the number of toes on their four limbs. Um that the fact that you know one has the smile mark King's the three toad as the smile markings and the mullet haircut. The other one looks like. Um, there's a site called Slothville. It's a it's a conservation site run by a woman named Lucy Cook and um, she says that the two toad slaws look a bit like a cross between a Wookie and a pig. And I think she absolutely nailed it with that description, right, Yeah, what does them look like? The little What was the Christmas Special? What was Chewbacca's son? Oh man, if you can remember that, Chuck, I'll buy you a case of beer my head, put your phone down. I don't know, I can't remember, but that's sort of what it reminded me of. Norman. I'm pretty sure it was Norman. Norman, Norman Baca you right, I can't remember. I can't either. I'm sure there's somebody out there. It's like you beer Josh, I only said that I was making that offer to Chuck, so Wookie to pig. That's a pretty good descriptor, right. So my point is this, though um as as similar as two toe sloss and three toad sloths seem, and there are some differences, but really in the grand scheme of things, there they seem a lot, a lot closer than say, you know, a a dove and a sloth flaming pitchfork in a slow um. But they're actually really separate. They're not even they're multiple different species. They're not even in the same genus. And for comparison, humans and chimps are in the same genus. Two different types of sloths aren't even in the same genus, so there's a big distinction between the two and um. I looked up sloth News, which is fast breaking strangely enough, but they they there's a study that came out recently where they did some molecular DNA studies on sloth um sloth evolution, and they found that they may the two toad and the three toad slots maybe even further separated and may have evolved independently of one another, that they may be even more distantly related than we than you think. So as similar as they seem to be, they're actually pretty different. Although they are really similar. It's a it's a weird fluke of evolution all around. Yeah, Characteristically, I think they're fairly similar. Um, the two toed variety are a little bit bigger, uh and hang upside down a little bit more than the three toed variety. Who you'll see those sitting upright sometimes in trees. But I read somewhere that they slaus can spend up the nine of their life upside down, yea, which is amazing. They do everything upside down, They mate upside down, they give birth upside down, they do almost everything that they do upside down hanging and and did you say, was the two toad that spend more of their life upside down than the three to two toad? A little bit more hang time, right, So that's one difference. But even still, it's not like the three toad or just averse to being upside down. I think both of them spend so much time upside down that the part of their hair rather than being on their backs or their head the top of their head like ours is um, it's on their bellies because their upside down so much that that's how gravity is has forced their to part just like shimp, Just like an upside down shimp. Boy ships hair. Wow, it was something, it was something the original butt cut. Yeah it was, wasn't it? Yea. So the Brady puss also has an extra neck vertebrae. So if you've ever seen a sloth uh seemingly turn its head three hundred and sixty degrees, it's because they can turn their head about two d seventy degrees and have almost a three hundred sixty degree you know, counting their peripheral vision range of sight. Yes, yes, but without that is that is strictly from moving their head. They actually again they lack so much muscle mass and tissue that they don't have the muscles to move their eyeballs in their in their heads, so when they look around, they have to move their whole head. But it has helped out for sure, especially after a hard night on other day. But they they they the fact that they have that extra vertebrae helps them look around more. But it's just one more thing that makes them an extraordinarily unusual creature because only sloths and manatees are are mammals that have more than seven vertebrae. Every other mammal on the planet has seven vertebrae, and sloss the manatees are the only two that don't. Manatees a mammal. Yeah right, yeah, they breathe there. They just spend a lot of time in water. They were probably some sort of like wolf for bear or something that eventually took to water. Well, speaking of bears and water, uh, Slaus are really good swimmers. Um. If you look up a YouTube video of slow swimming, it's actually they can kind of get around, um and are somewhat graceful in the water. They can hold their breath for up to forty minutes, and in order to do so, they can cut their heart rate by two thirds and their metabolism down, which is like they already I mean, we'll get into their metabolism later, but that's saying something. If they can cut their metabolism down even more on purpose, yeah for real, because the the sloth metabolism is a thing to to behold in your mind. It's like, um, yeah, we'll get to it in a little bit, but just just know that I'm excited to talk about sloth metabolism, okay. Uh. And then I mentioned speaking of bears. Uh. They their original predecessor back in the day was something called a giant ground sloth or a megatherium. And if you look at this thing, it looks sort of like a bear. Um its face is a little bit different, but it kind of looks like a just a big giant brown bear. It looked like a giant beaver to me without the tail. I really that's I mean, that's what I thought. Well, beaver with out of tail is really just a tiny bear with big teeth. I guess so, I guess so. But they found that just from examining its bones, they found that it could walk on um its back legs, which makes it the largest bipedal land mammal that ever lived, which is pretty cool. And there was a sloth ancestor amazing, and we used to eat him to chuck. We found um tool marks on some of the bones, and they think, well, humans probably hunted it to extinction. Yeah, tuk took, I guess yeah. Although we've determined he was in the anderth all right, right, he's been designated officially as a neandertal. Uh, shall we take a break. I think it's high time. Man. All right, this is our slowest episode ever and we'll be right back. So before we get going on more real sloth stuff, I'm assuming you have not seen the movie Zootopia or have you. I don't think kids movie, No, no, I haven't. There's a there's a sloth scene where that's very very funny, and in fact, they made that a very big part of the original movie trailer where these uh animals are in a hurry to find out some information from the d m V. And so they go to the d m V. And of course, as you know, sort of an in joke to anyone has ever been at the d m V, which is notably slow, they had a sloth that was it was completely run by sloths, and there's just this one great scene where they go up and try to get information from the sloth and they really do it right, they take their time, and uh, it's funny for kids and adults are like highly recommend it is, and I mean like it's probably fairly accurate because sloths, you know, everybody knows they're super super slow. It's not it's not really in overstatement or exaggeration. They genuinely are extremely slow. I saw that they move on the ground, which is when they move about the fastest aside from swimming, is something like half a kilometer per hour at top speed. And that they'll they'll move maybe six to eight feet up a tree in a minute. And these things are are made to climb trees. And that's how fast, or I should say that's how slow they move. Yeah, they're The actual term sloth um dates back to the twelfth century in Spain, or in the Spanish language at least, they were called los petasosos, which translates to the lazies, which is hysterical because Emily and I often call animals lazies. Look at those lazies because pets are lazy. Sure, yeah, they're not sloth lazy though, no, they're not sloth lazy. But that literally translates into the lazies. And then when the Spanish explorers started talking about the lazies, it was translated into the word sloth in English and about the I guess early seventeenth century, yeah, yeah, because it was it was a cleric I believe. Who was like, oh, well, we don't talk about laziness. We talked about sloth because it's a one of the seven deadly sins. Now, it's really kind of a down word when it's used as a as an insult, for sure, you know, but it's like the slaughter of the best. So I don't know. I like it, I know, But at the same time, it's like if somebody calls you slothful, you know that they walked right past lazy, like they saw it and said, no, lazy is not enough. I really want to drive home how much I disdain your laziness. Yeah, that that is a good descriptor. Like if someone at work as slow as something and you describe them as slothful instead of just slow, right, because you're you're passing judgment on them as well, like like biblical style judgment, like you're going to hell, that's how slow you you took and getting this TPS report to me. Uh two toad sloths are omnivorous, so they can eat animals. Um. I didn't see where they do that a lot. They mainly still eat fruits and leaves and twigs and things, um, But they will eat birds sometimes in lizards, I would imagine they have to be wounded or something, because it's not like they I mean, surely they don't hunt. They're not fast enough, right, they're Yeah, they're not snatching a bird out of the air or something like that. They're not going after humming birds. It would have to be like maybe a recently killed or a an injured bird. And man, if you're an injured bird in the tropical rainforests of Central and South America, I'm guessing the last thing you want to see is a hungry to toad sloth slowly coming at you, because you know it's going to take a really long time for it to eat you alive. There's a funny YouTube video actually called when a Sloth Chases You. It's just just a sloth on the ground, like set to horror music. So I watched a lot of sloth videos. There's well, there's a lot of good ones out there. I I recommend looking up sloth fight. Do you think it'd be sad or disturbing? But there's a bunch of different videos and it's actually it's in the grand sloth style. It's really cute. When sloth's fight, Yeah, fight, fight, fight like they they look like they're taking it seriously and they're all agitated. But it's impossible for us to take the sloth fight seriously. It's just too cute and they're just too incompetent at fighting. Oh dear, the three toad guys, they are very much more picky eaters, and they eat um generally. They these toxic leaves from just a few trees, and they they hang around, like if they find a good tree that they like, they will hang around that tree for a long long time. Yeah, there's apparently they know that some three toad sloths will inhabit the same tree for their whole life. It's it's rare, it's unusual, but even still, I mean, their entire range usually doesn't extend over like thirteen acres or five and a half hectares, right, Like, it's a very small limited area that a sloth, a three toad sloth in particular, what will inhabit their whole life. Right, I think we can talk about the metabolism now since we're eating. Yes, I'm so happy, so I know what the I know what you're effect of the show probably has to just go ahead. There's like eight in here, So the reason slots move so slowly is because in part, they metabolize so slowly. Like when you when you metabolize, you're converting like food into energy, right, and you're doing all sorts of stuff with that. You're moving your muscles, you're you're walking, you're laughing, you're talking, you're recording a podcast, you're digesting food. And slots are mammals, so they do have this metabolism that's similar to um any other mammal metasism, metabolism, it's just way slower and therefore it's way weaker. Like the human metabolism puts out about eighty watts of energy at any given time, Sloths put out less than four watts. It's just extraordinarily slow, and even compared to humans are compared to other animals there same size, they they metabolize things way more slowly. So the reason that they move so slowly is because they literally don't have the energy to move much faster. Yeah, it's uh, it takes a whole month to digest a meal. Um, they have to do it. That's slow. If they would digest faster, it could poison themselves because they're eating these toxic leaves they don't have incisors, so they they trim these leaves down. They smack their little lips together and trim these leaves down. Uh. And again, I hate to say the word cute again, but it's pretty adorable to see a little sloth chewing on a leaf. Yeah. But imagine you're a wounded bird and a toothless sloth is eating you to death. Yeah, I imagine it's not a quick a quick death. No, you get gummed to death. Uh. And I think the fact of the show probably is this whole um, the whole farting business. Sure, we'll take it all right. Well, here's the deal. They eat so slow that they don't even have gas that builds up in their system. Uh. That is how slow they they are digesting their food, so the gas just gets reabsorbed through the intestines and into the bloodstream. Uh. And it says here that they're the gases then, uh, respired out of the lungs. Does that mean that they mouth for it or does it? Yeah? I mean that's what I saw is that they have. Yeah, they basically pass those same gases that they normally would out of their their fannie in the American sense, um the out of their mouth through breathing. Interesting. So yeah, I guess the mouth fart worst band name ever. Worse than diarrhea Planet. You're right, man, it's better than No, it's actually worse than frozen poop knife. They should do a joint tour. Yeah, yeah, you know that mouth fart is going to be the opener always. They're never make it to the headline. Boys are never headline, you know. And I say boys because there's no way a girl band would be called mouth fart the so uh. They also have a multi chambered stomach sort of like a cow um, which is really interesting because that's like a third of their body weight if their stomachs are full. Yeah yeah, and I mean, like the reason why it's so so much of their body ways because they digest foods so slowly, they have to have this multi chambered stomach to get as many nutrients as they possibly can out of it. And even still, like, it's a really terrible evolutionary strategy to evolve as a a strictly um is it or bore vous as strictly tree dwelling herbivore, Like that's that's a really bad strategy because you have to be small enough to exist in the tree, right, Um, but at the same time, you have to be big enough to eat tons of leaves every day. Well, the if not, you're because the leaves don't give you they're not very energy dense, so you have to eat a ton of them to get good energy. Well, the sloss evolved the different strategy. They just slowed their metabolism down, so they can be small, but they don't have to eat that many leaves. And in fact, they can go for days without eating. And because they digest so slowly, they only poop about once a week. But to to the central cog of this whole adaptation is having a big stomach that can very slowly digest every possible nutrient out of the food that they eat. Yeah, so they do. They defecate and urinate once a week. Um, generally in the same spot kind of at the base of the tree. I don't think they like to wander too far because when they're on the ground they are um much more at risk than when they're up in their tree. Um. Yeah, because they're super slow and they're you know, they're at risk for attack for you know, whatever, any any sort of larger mammal could come by and have a sloth lunch at any time, right, right, In particular, the harpy eagle is like their main predator. But also, yeah, they're they're definitely vulnerable to acelots and jaguars and um, virtually any other predator in the jungle because they move so slowly and they have such an inability to defend themselves. But what they've what that Some researchers think that the reason sloths evolved to move so slowly is because it's a defense mechanism for them that rather than um like the howler monkeys that they share the jungle with. You know, when something comes along um and and gets the howler monkeys agitated, the howler monkeys scream and run around and try to escape. Sloths, right, the sloths, who may be in the same tree as a howler monkey, um just stays motionless and silent, and so they camouflage in with the tree. So that really slow movement is actually a defensive adaptation as well. Yeah, I think the sloths uh defensive motto is nothing to see here. You're just like, we're just gonna be really still. Let these monkeys take all the attention and no one will notice this, and that's kind of the idea. Yeah, that's exactly the idea, and it works, It actually does work, and it's it's a it's misleading, I think to say, which means I accidentally misleat everybody that's that slows have no um recourse if they are found out. I saw at least one video where a harpie eagle found a sloth in a tree and lands right next to it, and the sloth just slowly like lifts its arm up and kind of swats behind it with its claw. Man the herpie eagle and the heartpie eagle look kind of puzzled, but it worked, like the herpy eagle left it alone. So yeah, they can ward off danger, just not that frequently actually. Yeah. And you know they despite the fact that they moved super slow, they uh, and they are lazy. They don't actually sleep as much as you would think. Um, in captivity, they will sleep a lot longer because they have, you know, no predators around, no jaguars, and they understand that and they're like, all right, everything's cool. I can really dig in and sleep some. But out in the wild they sleep, um, you know a little under ten hours, which is I guess if you would have asked me beforehand, I would I would have guessed, you know, fifteen and up first sloth. For sloth sleep well, they will. In captivity they sleep as much as fifteen to twenty hours a day, but in the wild they think. Like you said, you know, they got to be on point. And they're not stinky either, which is another great thing, even though you definitely don't want to slot as a pet um for reasons we'll talk about later. They don't smell. They smell um. They smell kind of like the trees they live in, which is kind of great and another defense mechanism. Yeah. So the reason that they smell like the trees that they live in is because sloths move so slowly that algae grows on them and their coats in their fur, which other sort of amazing part. Like I had no idea. No, I didn't either, and I don't think researchers had much of an idea about this until recently. They knew that sloths got covered with with green algae, especially during the rainy season. Normally they have like a tan or a brown colored coat, but when it gets rainy in the tropical rainforest they live in. Uh, an algae like growth will build up on their coat, which I mean, you try to grow some algae on you, you can't do it. Even if you didn't take a shower, you you move around too much, You couldn't get any algae to grow on you. Sloths can. And at first they thought, ha ha, that's that's hilarious. You had another funny fact about how slow sloths are. But as they've um, as they've researched more deeply into it, they found that actually the sloth coat is an amazing ecosystem in itself on the sloth, and that whether it's it's it's intentional or not, the sloth actually kind of cultivates a farm inside of its own coat that it uses to help feed itself to. Yeah. So, I mean I had seen pictures of these green tinted sloths and always kind of wonder what the deal was. Um, it helps act as camouflage, which is super helpful. And I don't know, did you mention the groove in the center of the hairs, no, Yeah, So each hair has a little groove down the center and that's where the algae is allowed to grow and obviously because they're not moving fast, you're gonna get you know, more of a chance to grow too. But like you said, they are a little ecosystem into themselves in that fur. Uh. They did one study that found nine hundred and eighty beatles living on a single sloth just taking roosts in there and their little jungle coats. Uh. And then there's this moth species. This is crazy um, the sloth moth, which is another great band name by the way, cryptosis. Uh, calepi colo epi color epi. Always say just the e it's always ohe I think you're right, yeah, color epi coloiepi, colo eppie, something like that, tomato tomato, cryptosis colo weepie dyer uh. And they they actually colonize exclusively in sloth fur. Right, that's the only place you will find that type of moth is living in the fur of a sloth. It's the sloth moth. Yeah, like totally symbiotic relationship. Uh. You know, they climbed down the once a week to poop and they they these moths lay their eggs in that poop. Um. And yes, they can actually lay their eggs in dingle berries, sloth berries. Everyone knows what that is, right, do we need to explain that. I don't know. I would say look it up. Okay, I think that's as far as we need to say. So the adult moths emerge from this poop, uh, and that they then say mama, and they fly up and take rest in the slots fur, right, and then they mate and reproduce, and then they lay eggs in the sloth poop and the circle of life continues. But again, this type of moth you won't find anywhere on Earth except in the fur of a sloth. And then there's also beatles in there. And so as these things like grow and die and decay and other plant matter and whatever is floating around in the air in the rainforest all kind of combined and get stuck into these grooves and the hair of the sloth fur, it forms this algae. And they know that there is um a relationship between the sloth moth and the algae in that the sloughs that have the most moths also have the most algae. And they figured out it's just basically this decaying matter and they're like, okay, this is too weird. Camouflage that kind of makes sense. But the fact that there's a moth that only lives in in the sloth fur, and the more more of those moths are, the more algae there's it's just too weird, and um, they tested this algae and they found that it's rich in fats, and for a very long time they're like, Okay, the metabolism kind of explains how a sloth could sustain itself. It's just it burns so little energy that it it it can live on very very nutrient sparse leaves. But it's still kind of a mystery. It doesn't fully make sense. And they think they figured out that the sloth as it's grooming itself eats this algae which is high in fats, and that that supplements its diet of leaves, and that that's really the combination of these leaves and this algae are what keeps the sloth live over its lifetime. And in the meantime there urine and their feces are fertilizing the tree that is their habitat, right where these moths are also laying their eggs. So it's just like this really unique symbiosis going on between plant, animal, and insect. Yeah, and everyone seems to be doing great. Yeah, And one of the thing I was like, well, you know, how much does that really help? The sloth is pooping at the base of the tree once a week. Does that really help? And apparently it really does. And it's not one of those It is slow, really, so you just nailed it. So sloths are so slow their poop actually slows down the decomposition in the tree because in the rainforest, decomposition happens so fast that the tree as actually nutrient depleted. Because the decomp happens so fast, sloth poop slows the whole process down and actually nurtures the tree even more. Yeah, it seems like everywhere the sloth goes, everyone just chills out it. Basically, the sloth dingleberries are just little rainbows trailing out of its behind. That's what sloths have. You have to look closely, but you'll see it. It sounds like a story my daughter would make up. So you do share a birthday, hey, which is coming up actually probably right around the time this is released. So oh yeah, well birthday day Ruby. All right, we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk about sloth sex right after this. All right, Chuck, you promised it. You have to deliver sloth sex blow by blow. So here's the deal. This is where things like if you're like, all right, the sloth is the cutest thing, and this is all adorable, and they're just amazing, they are all those things. But this is when you might I just want to prepare everyone to be slightly disappointed, maybe a little bit with the next couple of segments, because first of all, sloths, you want to just think they sit around and just hug in love on each other all the time. They're solitary creatures. They don't want to be around even other sloths. No, but but this is something that you can have to kind of pick yourself back up after that devastating blow in in a square kilometer of rainforest, there might be something like seven hundred sloths even though there, yes, they're they're very dense neighborhoods of basically shut in weirdos. Imagine that that's a sloth community. The most devastating thing is coming up later. I know you know what I'm talking about. Oh yes, boy. But the males, like let's say, to sloths did find themselves in the same tree, they might get into a little fight but more than likely they'll just, you know, one of them will leave and they'll go find their own tree and it might be a tree ten or fifteen feet away, it sounds like, but it's their own. Um. They look for new trees. Also, when they're searching for a female partner, the males do and they mate very quickly. It's um. It lasts just a few seconds and then the males leave the female. They don't have anything to do with the babies, which I looked up and I was like, surely they have some cute name like sloth babies, but they're just called sloth babies, which is cute. Yeah, that's pretty cute. Not bad. So you know, you know, we were talking about fertilizing trees and everything. When they come down and poop once a week, I know where this is headed. So that was a big That was a big mystery, Like why would you if you're a sloth, coming down from a tree to poop uses up about eight percent of your energy. That's a lot, and it doesn't make any sense because it leaves you vulnerable to predation. Some researchers say, we gotta figured out they're leaving scent markers on the tree to signal to other sloths come on over here. Um, I'm I'm open to to whatever freaky stuff you want to try. Sloth friend, Yeah, anal secretions, so he, like a male sloth, will literally just say I'm just gonna rub my ans here and I'll meet you back there at eleven o'clock at least a little rainbow trail. I guess. So the female can also and and I heard these. Uh. I looked up some videos on the female mate mating call or whatever, because they can also put out the call that they're ready. Um. And it's described as a high pitched scream here in this article, but it sounds sort of bird like, like if I was in the jungle and I heard this, I would think it was a bird. Yeah, it's not sexy, though, it's not sexiest animal. Did you get that reference right now? No, I didn't, but I appreciate you saying it was a reference Beverly Hills Cop Balki, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a little cameo on Beverly Hills Coop. He was one of the all time greats. I never watched that TV show. I know you didn't. And Chuck, you're missing out. Remember I keep going back to that piano moving episode, and it was just one of the greatest of physical comedy ever really. But yeah, also, and it wasn't just Bouky, like, Balki and cousin Larry were really well cast. They're perfect foils. Seeing cousin Larry get like his last bit of patients just break and his eyes get really big because Balki did something, it was a beautiful thing to behold. Cousin Larry. Was he the other guy, the main guy? Yeah, I see it. I see a DVD box it in your future. Were they actually cousins in the show? Yes? Not in real life. I mean I don't know the set up at all. Is it that he has this wacky cousin from another land that all of a sudden shows up on his doorstep. Yeah, Balky Bartacamas from I can't remember. They say it a bunch of times, but his he's like a central southern, central European type guy, like from the Balkans or something like Latvia or something. And he comes over to America and he stays with his cousin Larry. I have to check it out. It's funny. All the all the great TV out that's mounting on a list. I'm like, I'll have to check out perfect strangers, right right exactly, it's on my list should be high up. So the woman puts out the maiden call the males. Uh, there may be competition for uh for that lady um who is in need. And if they do fight, they will fight upside down and uh, like you said, it's um a slow fight, is I guess pretty cute as it turns out, right, yeah, it is cute. So yeah, the males will fight to the to the hurt bruised ego, and then one of them will leaven the mail that remains will say, okay, give me a kiss, baby, and then they'll have um. They'll do it like a few times. Uh, but it's really fast. Apparently I didn't I have enough pride, did not look up sloth sex. But um, from what I read, it happens very quickly. And then that's that and like like you said earlier, the male just kind of moves along like good luck with our children, and then the sloth um ges station period depends on whether it's a two toad or a three toad sloth, but it's somewhere between six and eleven months and then a sloth mom will give birth to one sloth baby at the time. No letters, nope, just one cute little baby. So here's where it gets devastating. Um. They do nurse their young for a little while, but again, that takes a lot of energy to nurse a little baby, so they only do that, um for a couple of weeks before they wean that baby onto solid food. The mommy is passing along all the information that the baby needs to know about what food is and how to how to hang and live in trees. And they do cling to their moms, which is super cute, for about six to eleven months. Um, and then they are off on their own. Although they do this is sort of cute. They do share arrange with mom and apparently we'll stay within uh calling distance of one another. M And this is all great, and I know I'm set set everyone up for heartbreak. So here it goes. If a mommy sloth is up in a tree and baby sloth slips and falls down to the ground, mommy may just leave baby there. Yeah, that's like really hard for me to accept. I know. Uh, because a baby sloth is cute. Adult sloths are cute enough, but a baby sloth is just like I bleach right, so to to the idea of it just being like down there on their own. It was a great three months we had together, but I'm not going to put myself in the at risk of being a vulnerable vulnerable to to some sort of a deal, right. Yeah, that's what they think is that the baby is just not worth it to the sloth, which is really said. I would understand that if there were sloth litters and one of them fell off, or that they didn't bond, but they clearly do bond during the piggyback phase of the baby's development. Yea, So it's they think that it's just like it's just too much of a risk for the sloth and the law says better you than me. Kids. Yeah, this this disturbed me because I was the same as you. I was like, if there was a litter, I get it, or if they like they're highly successful, so you would think that you know, after a nine you know, up to a year of gestation period, or if they pump babies out like every month or so, it wouldn't be a big deal. But I don't know. It just seemed like it was worth that eight percent energy and maybe a risk of panther uh feed being panther feed, right, So I mean, I guess it would if that happened, that the baby falling happened to coincide with the mom having to poop at the base of the tree, maybe the baby has a chance. Then I'm gonna save you because I got to take a right oh man, um, So let's just go right past that, because that is still super sad for me to think about. They do live for about uh twenty years in the wild, which is pretty good for her mammal, especially when that's slow and that you know, seemingly defenseless. Yeah, that's the three toad. Yeah, the three toad. The two toads live about twelve in captivity, though they can live thirty and forty years. Uh, including our old friend Missy at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia, who just died a couple of years ago at the old age of forty three. For from what I understand, she's the oldest um known sloth to to live. She looked at the fact that she did. She looked great up to the end, like Phillis diller Um and the fact that uh that sloths lifespans double or triple in captivity really kind of says a lot about just how how much, how how frequently they fall victim to predators like that, to what kills sloths is, it's not fighting with other slaws, it's not falling from trees. They can withstand that, it's being eaten by a predator. That's how slaws typically die. So when you take them out of that situation, they tend to live very long. But like we were saying at the top of this episode, they're not necessarily happy. They get very stressed out when humans handle them, and they can actually die from stress. Um. They look happy, but they would much rather be at their home. In Central and South America really really really really difficult to keep alive because remember, especially with the three toad sloth, they're real picky eaters, and they learn from their mothers what constitutes food, and so whatever tree that their mom's been living in basically that specific tree growing in a rainforest in in South America, that is what constitutes food to the sloth, not anything else you could possibly come up with, and so they'll still starve in captivity pretty easily. Actually, especially if they're kept in captivity outside of Central or South America. Yeah, so if they do. Let's say you're a wildlife management professional and you come upon a little baby sloth that has been dropped, they will rescue that sloth if they can and try and rehabilitate it, but the goal is to get it back into the wild as soon as possible, not like, oh it's so cute, we're gonna keep it around for a little while. I mean, there are clearly some in captivity, but it's not like a common zoo animal that you will see. Right. There was one other thing that was kind of a quirk of their metabolism. So their mammals, which means they're warm blooded, but they're actually not really warm blooded because they produce so little energy and heat through their metabolism. They actually use the same kinds of strategies that like snakes and lizards do, where they use the sun to adjust their body temperature, which means that if it gets too hot, they can overheat and die. If it gets too well, they can very easily freeze to death because their body temperature changes with the ambient temperature. So that, combined with the fact that their food comes from a single tree in Central America. Um. That makes them really difficult to keep alive in captivity, which is why, like you're saying, they want to rehabilitate them back into the wild. That's the goal of it. Yeah. And while they are doing pretty well out there as far as their um status goes, they are of course threatened in the sense that any animal in South America and the rainforest is threatened because of deforestation. Uh. It's just you know, the sad fact all animals, even if they're doing well, are going to be threatened if you're hacking through and and leveling their habitat, like is what is going on pretty much. Yeah, that's I mean, that's the biggest threat is deforestation. Although for the pygmy sloth that lives on a scudo island off of the coast of Panama and nowhere else be because their their habitat is so limited that any deforestation that happens there is put them in grave danger. Um. But it's basically cutting down the forest and then building roads through the forest because sloths will go from tree to tree on the ground sometimes, which means that when they encounter a road, it's hard to get from one tree to the other aside from on the ground. So a sloth crossing the road is probably not a good gamble for the sloth. But the more roads we build through the rainforest, the more sloths to get hit by cars, which is about the saddest thing you could hit by a car with a car. Yeah. And here's uh, you know you always hear about um like a movie medicine man, like the cure for cancer maybe in this one leaf in the middle of a forest somewhere in a jungle. They may not have the key to cancer in a sloth, But the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute did collect fungi samples, you know, the algae that grows in their fur. Uh. And this is of the three toed sloth. And they own that some of these samples from the sloth coat helped fight against malaria or the parasite that causes malaria and um chagas disease, which I know we've talked about. It's another tropical parasitic disease, stop your heart mersa cholera, salmonella. Uh. And they were also active against human breast cancer cells. So pretty amazing, yeah, which I mean, like that's the stuff that they found in the algae growing on sloth fur, which, Yeah, that is astounding. It's awesome. So we're all gonna be chewing on sloths in the future. Well, yeah, don't say that. They'll be alive. You don't have to kill him or anything. Gently suck on their fur. Okay, okay, Um you got anything else? I got nothing? Well, if you want to know more about sloths, there's a whole internet out there about them, although we did a pretty good job covering at Chuck if I do say so ourselves. Um, well, since I said Internet, that means it's time for listener man, I'm gonna call this politics on your show. Hey, guys, love the show. I've been listening for several years now, and I've learned lots of good stuff. And you've also introduced me to the end of the World with Josh Clark and movie crush. Yeah how about that? All right? Will goes deep? Uh And he says this recently, I was looking through reviews and comments on the show on Apple Podcasts. I saw a number of people making critical comments about how you share your opinions on religion and politics too often. Um, I am a politically conservative and religious guy. And I want to encourage you to keep sharing your opinions. I live in a smallish Midwestern town and a red state where I grew up and spent most of my life. Most of the people in my orbit either go to church with me and my family or hold similar conservative views. Your opinions serve as an important function of bringing some alternate alternative perspectives that sometimes challenge my opinions and encourage me to reevaluate certain positions and views. Please keep interjecting your views, guys. Too many of us automatically dismiss any opinions, and unfortunately people who's views contrast with their own. UM. I used to work for an administrator. He would frequently say, if we're all thinking the same thing, then some of us aren't thinking that sounds like something. That's a really great that's a great solational poster. That's good. That's that's the first album's title for Mouth Farts debut. Keep up, boy, keep up the great work, and keep offering your views along with your well research and fascinating topics, well seasoned with witty humor and hilarious banter. Regards will Well, that was a great, very nice, very kind email, like Will saw something probably said. These guys probably know about this, and I want to make sure that they know it's cool. So thanks Will as much appreciated. Um, if you like to join in with Will's course, we love that. I would also be interested to hear other people who want to write in and explain why we shouldn't share our politics or views, because I'm I'm very curious to hear the other side as well. It makes me a centrist. Fairness dot com right, You can go to stuff you Should Know dot com and find all of our social links there, and you can also send us a good old fashioned email, Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.