16: Blobfish & Three-toed Sloth
Ellen: Hey friends, this is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And this is Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And this is Just the Zoo of Us, the animal review podcast where we take your favorite species of animals, we review them and we rate them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics. Christian and I are not zoological experts. We do a lot of research and we do our best to make sure we're presenting information from trustworthy sources.
Christian: As best we can.
Ellen: Yup. And in that vein, I would like to make our first ever self-correction. Yes. I was listening to something recently where I heard them talk about nudibranchs*.
Christian: Oh!
Ellen: In episode 5, we talked about the blue dragon sea slug, Glaucus atlanticus, and I repeatedly referred to them as [new-di-branchs].
Christian: Okay, that's how I would have pronounced it too.
Ellen: This is a pronunciation issue. Apparently a lot of people do pronounce it that way, but the most commonly accepted way of pronouncing it is nudibranch.
Christian: Kind of in that same etymology as the bronchial parts of the breathing system, maybe.
Ellen: Sure. Or like, chiropractic things? Chiropracty? So anyway, I heard someone refer to them as nudibranchs and I remembered that we had called them [new-di-branches] and I felt really self-conscious about it. So, just to double check myself, I messaged the Monterey Bay Aquarium and asked them how they pronounce it and they said nudibranchs, so I'm going to take their word for it and apologize for mispronouncing nudibranch over and over again.
Christian: All good.
Ellen: Yup.
Christian: That's cool that the Monterey Bay aquarium replied back to you.
Ellen: They did and they were very friendly about it. It was a DM exchange on Twitter that was maybe like three or four messages long, and they somehow manage to cram like eight puns into those.
Christian: I was about to say, did they answer in the form of a meme?
Ellen: Well not a meme, no, but there were some emojis in there.
Christian: Excellent.
Ellen: Yeah. But they were, they were very responsive to my question and helped out a lot, so...
Christian: Fantastic.
Ellen: That's my little self-correction. It's nudibranch, not [new-di-branch].
Christian: Learn something new every day.
Ellen: Yep. So that's, that's just part of our journey for self improvement. All right. So last week I went first with the Malayan Flying Fox, so Christian, it is your turn to go first this week.
Christian: Yeah. So speaking of learning something new, my animal for this week is the infamous blob fish.
Ellen: Fantastic.
Christian: The blobfish was recommended to us by Matthew St. Jean and Dalton Weeks .
Ellen: Incessantly, I might add.
Christian: Yes!
Ellen: So you can finally get off our backs. Persistence pays off, folks.
Christian: So the blobfish, that actually, that term actually refers to a couple of different species- or it could, I should say, but the one specifically I'm going to be doing is the Psychrolutes microporos. This is the species thought to be of the infamous picture of the blobfish on the internet.
Ellen: Yep. I've got it in my head. Yep. Giant booger, right?
Christian: Yeah. Basically. Yeah. I'm getting my information from the australianmuseum.net.au website, that's the Australian Museum website. And speaking of which, that blobfish picture that so many new about, that little blobfish was known as Mr. Blobby by the ship crew that pulled it up while trolling.
Ellen: Boy, a lot of creative minds on that, uh... On that trolley, huh?
Ellen: Uhh, this! Now let's do the next thing.
Ellen: It's kind of blob-shaped... All right, Mr. Blobby, we'll go with that.
Christian: I wonder if they even got the gender right, but anyway...
Ellen: It could have been a Miss Blobby. I.
Christian: That's true. So a little bit of basic info. This particular specimen was 285 millimeters long, or about 11 inches.
Ellen: Oh, that's pretty big.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. This particular one again was found off of the Norfolk Ridge, which is northwest of New Zealand, and it was pulled up from between 1,013 meters and 1,340 meters, which is about 3,300 to 4,400 feet, and that happened in June of 2003. However, the family can be found in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans anywhere between the depths of 100 meters and 2,800 meters or 300 to 9,000 feet.
Ellen: Oh, that's way down there.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That's over a mile down.
Christian: It's quite a bit.
Ellen: Dang.
Christian: The taxonomic family that they belong to is called the Psychrolutidae, and the relatives in that family are of course the blobfish along with some other fish known as fathead sculpins.
Ellen: Fathead... One more time?
Christian: Fathead sculpins.
Ellen: Sculpin.
Ellen: S-C-U-L-P-I-N-S.
Ellen: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah.
Ellen: They were not kind with the naming convention of this fish. They're looking at him like, he's got fat head, we'll call him fathead.
Christian: So I think as many of our listeners can probably guess, a lot of what I have to say is going to fall under the aesthetic section, but luckily that's the last one. So first off...
Ellen: Let's really build up to it. This is the drum roll, leading up to.
Christian: So first up is effectiveness. This is how well do they do the things that they are meant to do. So these are kind of natural abilities, things that are built in to themselves to do this.
Ellen: How good their body do.
Christian: Right. So for the blobfish, I'm giving it a 7 out of 10 for effectiveness.
Ellen: That's okay. That's pretty good.
Christian: And that is because it is found in very, very deep water and it is built for very, very deep water. So one, its bones are very soft to avoid cracking under extreme pressures.
Ellen: Is it bone or is it cartilage?
Christian: They refer to it as bone.
Ellen: Okay! Cool.
Christian: Yeah. And then it's flesh and muscles are very flabby and soft, which is meant to handle the pressures, which kind of goes back to the goblin shark. Right? Cause that was one of the big descriptors.
Ellen: Yeah, definitely flabby is what I was thinking.
Christian: Yep. Uh, so they're built for these extreme pressures. Another thing that they have going for them is they don't have a swim bladder like many fish do. And that has to do with the extreme changes in pressure. I'm going to talk more about that in the aesthetic section though.
Ellen: Well, well hold on. They don't have a swim bladder. How do they stay up?
Christian: So they don't have a swim bladder, and the way they get around that is that their body being made of kind of a flabby material is of a density very close to water.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: So they have a basically a neutral buoyancy.
Ellen: Oh! So how do they make themselves go higher or lower in the water?
Christian: Just swimming slightly.
Ellen: Oh. Okay.
Christian: So when you have a net buoyancy or net neutral buoyancy, you'll just stay wherever you're at and then you can just kinda guide yourself with momentum up or down.
Ellen: Oh, you're just aiming.
Christian: Basically.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: Um, think of space movement basically.
Ellen: Nice.
Christian: Whereas other kinds of fish, they are not of the same density as water. So yeah. So there are fish that require air bladders to control where they are in the water column, and then that air bladder has to react to them being in different parts of the water column because then the deeper you go, the more pressure is exerted on you. Again, I'm going to go more into how this affects the blobfish particularly a little further down.
Ellen: Okay. We'll get there.
Christian: So next up is ingenuity. This is the category that describes how good they are at doing things like tool use or making plans, things that are intelligent. I'm giving the blobfish just a 4 out of 10 on this one. And I should also mention there is not a whole lot of data out there about the blobfish.
Ellen: Oh yeah?
Christian: Yeah. So these little guys are found very deep in the water and it is pretty rare to find them in their natural habitat and living. They are found many times being pulled up by deep trawlers, but otherwise not a whole lot of information there.
Ellen: I think that's common for deep sea creatures.
Christian: Very.
Ellen: Because there's just so much space to cover. You can't possibly have eyes on them at all times. Right? Like it's just so vast. That's like most of the earth. Most of our planet is wide open ocean areas.
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: So it's just impossible to keep tabs on what they're up to.
Christian: Yeah. I think it's said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do the bottom of our own ocean.
Ellen: Yeah. And like once you get down there, oh boy, it's popping off down there deep in the ocean. That's where you start to get into the really just completely wild evolutionary, like, evolution just went insane down there.
Christian: Yep. Because it has to depend on all sorts of different things. So yeah, I'm giving the blobfish a 4 out of 10 for ingenuity and I'm mostly giving it that score for its ability as an ambush predator.
Ellen: Really?!
Christian: So they're not very fast, of course.
Ellen: They don't look fast.
Christian: So they do a sit and wait type method where they just wait for other things to get close to it.
Ellen: Are they on the bottom of the ocean or are they swimming around, just kind of like in the like open water?
Christian: It seemed, most of the pictures I've seen of them in their natural habitat have been at the bottom.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: So I think that range in depth primarily depends on where does the bottom sit in their particular environment.
Ellen: Oh that makes more sense. Okay.
Christian: Cause they're not, I don't think they're swimming up and down a huge range of depth, it just happens- just wherever the bottom happens to be.
Christian: Okay. That makes sense. Okay, so they're chilling out at the bottom. Maybe they're like hiding in rocks or like maybe they're hiding and waiting for their prey to get close by.
Christian: What's weird is that the videos I've seen of them, like open sandy areas and then they're just kind of hugging like the sparse rock or piece of coral here and there, just kinda sitting.
Christian: Sure.
Christian: It's kind of bizarre and it might make more sense when there's just no light, but...
Ellen: Yeah. So that's something you have to think about when you're down at the bottom of the ocean. Vision doesn't work like it does up here on the surface. Right. Just being able to look around and see things doesn't, isn't necessarily going to help you. So they have to be a little bit more creative with their camouflage tactics.
Christian: Exactly.
Christian: So that's, that's pretty interesting.
Christian: Yeah. And the final category, aesthetics.
Christian: Oh boy.
Christian: So this is kind of self explanatory, but this is where we talk about what they look like. I'm giving what I consider to be a very generous score, 4 out of 10 for aesthetics.
Christian: Some wiggle room there.
Christian: And here's why. So the infamous picture of the blobfish, of Mr Blobby, it's not good, right? Just a pile of goo...
Christian: He's struggling.
Christian: And then he has a weird nose type structure, which is odd in fish, right?
Christian: The nose, like flops over his nose and he looks like, um...
Christian: Very Squidward-esque.
Christian: I was about to say Squidward!
Christian: Or the cartoons that Jukebox the Ghost likes to draw.
Ellen: Oh, Tommy Siegel's cartoon style where the nose flops over the mouth. I wonder if it was inspired by the blobfish.
Christian: Yeah, I don't know. And then it has a weird yellow mucusy bit in the corner of its mouth, also.
Christian: The boogers.
Christian: That's what it looks like. That's what it looks like. But here's what's actually going on in that picture. The blobfish in that picture, it looks the way it does because of damage it took from the rapid change in pressure.
Christian: Oh, it, it got hurt.
Christian: Yeah.
Christian: Okay.
Christian: So that is not what they look like in their natural habitat.
Christian: I would hope not.
Christian: So lots of fish have this problem where if they are pulled out of the water quickly from a deep depth, they don't have time to react to the change in pressure biologically. So it causes damage to their, to their bodies.
Ellen: This happens with humans too. Humans can take a lot of damage from a change in pressure, that happens too quickly. You can get the bends from it.
Christian: Yes. And actually we're going to talk about what's going on there.
Christian: Oh, okay.
Christian: So first of all, the blobfish is meant for a huge amount of pressure. So just being at the sea level pressure by itself, it causes, you know, its body to kind of swell and droop. Cause if you've ever seen a balloon, for example, a go higher, higher, higher and higher until it's like in a very thin atmosphere, it starts to get bigger, right?
Christian: Sure.
Christian: So that's from equalization of pressure. So when you have a pressure differential there, the natural thing to happen is it's trying to equalize itself. So when you have a balloon with a certain volume of, we'll say air inside of it, the pressure is equalized on the inside and the outside. So as that balloon moves into an area of less pressure, the amount of air that's inside the balloon doesn't change, but it wants to equalize.
Ellen: So the air pressure from the inside going out is now more than the pressure from the outside going in. So it's starting to...
Christian: It gets bigger.
Christian: Expand, right.
Christian: Yeah. So that, that's, that's the only option in that setting. Another would be to let gas out. But with the balloon example, it doesn't have that, that opportunity. So it just gets bigger. So eventually what will happen is the balloon just gets bigger and bigger until it pops. So that's usually what happens with weather balloons. Along that vein, that's what happens biologically with creatures that go from one pressure to the next. Now, it's not so violent as a explosion.
Ellen: I would hope not. God, I would hope not. I just thought of that little Mr. Blobby just like poppin like a balloon and yeah, getting that fish snot everywhere.
Christian: So that is known as barotrauma.
Ellen: Barotrauma.
Christian: Yes.
Christian: Oh, like, uh, like a barometer.
Christian: Yes.
Christian: That means pressure, then.
Christian: Yep. And then there's all sorts of different things that can fall under that. And also you reminded me the booger per se, tt's not actually that it is actually a parasitic copepod.
Ellen: A parasite!
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Oh, interesting.
Christian: Yep, that unfortunately it was just positioned in the worst place ever.
Ellen: Oh Man! That poor little guy. Man, he had a parasite, he got taken up to the surface where he's not supposed to be, and he got deflated like a balloon...
Christian: Well not deflated, but more...
Ellen: Overinflated. Oh, man, that blobfish was having the worst day.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about some of the things with barotrauma that fish has to deal with, so even fish that are fished out of waters of 30 feet deep and are pulled up too quickly. So these kinds of fish usually have air bladders or swim bladders. So a problem that can happen there is when they're pulled out from that depth through quickly, their swim bladder cannot compensate quick enough. So what it would normally do is it would release gas out of the swim bladder to compensate for that. But it can only do that so quickly. So if it's pulled out of the water very, very quickly, what will happen is the air bladder will expand just like the balloon in our example where it's trying to equalize the pressure.
Ellen: Oh no.
Christian: So here's the problem with that.
Ellen: I can think of some.
Christian: Um, it displaces its organs when this happens.
Ellen: Oh... That's bad.
Christian: So a fish that is suffering from this kind of barotrauma, you will see its eyes starting to bulge out, its stomach will come out of its mouth and then, um, the last thing that could happen is its intestines come out... Well, the other end.
Ellen: Okay, great.
Christian: Yes. Uh, so a lot of states actually have rules that, you know, if you're out in a boat and fishing, you have to have a device of some sort to relieve pressure in the fish for this scenario, if you plan on throwing it back.
Ellen: Really?
Christian: Yes. All it basically is, is a syringe. So you just pierce the fish into its swim bladder, releasing gases, and then hopefully it should all return to normal.
Ellen: How do you know where the swim bladder is and get the syringe into the, um... You know what, now that I think of it, I'm assuming this applies to people that are like professionals.
Christian: Yeah. These are usually people very used to fishing and it's, the specifics is kind of based on the species of fish. But I think in general it's all in the same general area. Of course, I'm sure it takes practice to not go too deep or hit the wrong areas, cause you could cause more damage to the fish that way. And again, that only applies if you're trying to throw the fish back. Cause if you don't do that, what will happen is that they will stay at the top of the water and they won't be able to descend.
Ellen: Well, they don't belong there.
Christian: Yeah. Uh, eventually their swim bladder might compensate, but what will more likely happen is something will eat it before it's able to do that.
Ellen: Yeah. Probably. You got some opportunistic little fishies swimming around in there.
Christian: So that's a form of barotrauma that's experienced by most fish. Now with a blobfish, it does not have a swim bladder. So that specific thing does not happen to them. However, their flesh is just... bleh, when it happens.
Ellen: Bless those poor babies.
Christian: Maybe in humans, uh, you mentioned the bends, which happens usually with scuba divers when they come back to the surface too quickly or when they're not doing the right things when they're doing that. So my understanding of it is when you are ascending back to the surface, you're supposed to breathe out, the opposite being holding your breath or trying to breathe in. So again, the exact same thing as the balloon, right? So you either need to let gas out or the container is going to try to compensate. In humans, that container is your lungs.
Ellen: Yeah, you don't want those overfilling.
Christian: Yep. Or I guess more to be more correct, it would be the diaphragm. And then by extension, your lungs.
Ellen: Yeah. You gotta be careful with that. I have never been scuba diving, but I know a lot of people that have been scuba diving and you do have to like control your ascent back up to the top to make sure that you don't do damage to your insides.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: And I understand it actually takes a while. Like if you're really, really deep down, it can take a long time for you to come back up to the top because you have to like come up, you have to like come up a little bit and then stop and wait and then come up a little bit more and stop and wait. So it's like you have to do it in phases so that your body isn't just letting everything out all at once.
Christian: Yep. So, yeah. Um, that's the story with Mr. Blobby, the unfortunate result of a parasite and barotrauma.
Ellen: I guess that's why he be like that.
Christian: Yep. Um, I do encourage folks to try and see what they look like in their natural habitat, not under the effects of barotrauma. Not too much better, but at least better than what we're used to.
Ellen: So was your aesthetic score based on Mr. Blobby and his unfortunate circumstance, or was it based on how they normally look?
Christian: It's how they normally look. They're still not a particularly aesthetically pleasing fish, but it's much better than the meme. And in terms of conservation status, I couldn't find one for this particular species, but other species in the family are listed as least concern.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: And that's the blob fish.
Ellen: That was pretty good!
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: I learned a lot about deep sea fish in general as well through this, so thank you. That was well done.
Christian: No problem. All right, honey, what animal do you have for us this week?
Ellen: This week I'm going to be talking about the brown-throated three-toed sloth.
Christian: Woah that's a lot of adjectives.
Ellen: It's a long name. Yeah? The scientific name is Bradypus variegatus. Bradypus, I think, is pretty good.
Christian: Brad is short for Bradypus.
Ellen: Yeah. So every time- a lot of people mistakenly think that the name Brad is short for like Bradley or something, it's actually Bradypus. So I'm getting my information on this animal from National Geographic, Live Science, Animal Diversity Web and slothssanctuary.com which is the website for the sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica.
Christian: Oh okay.
Ellen: Yup. There's a big sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica that I've been following on social media for 10 years. So they have a really active and great social media presence. They're always posting cute sloth pictures. Yeah, so I was excited to talk about the sloth. Now, there is the three-toed sloth, of which there are a few different species, and then there are the two-toed sloths, which have a few different species as well.
Christian: Cool.
Ellen: They're very different from each other. They are both sloths, yes, and they have some things in common but there are pretty big differences between them in a lot of different areas. Like very different behavior, different diets and they look different too. Immediately like, identifiable as very different from each other.
Christian: And of course, a 50% increase in number of toes.
Ellen: Is that... Yeah, I guess. I don't math good. I'm sorry. 50%, sure.
Christian: From two to three at least.
Ellen: Yes. So yeah, if you've never seen a sloth before, this is an arboreal mammal. They live in the trees. They have very long forearms. Their forearms are twice as long as their back legs.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: So they have very long forearms, kind of short back legs. At the end of each of their limbs are three long, sharp claws. They're very, very long. They don't have like fingers per se. They just have these claws. They are covered in a wirey gray or brown fur and they have a really small, what I would describe as a compact face where they have a really short nose and they have wide-set eyes and their eyes are framed by these black bands. They kind of look like, almost like a raccoon's bands. How they go off to the side of the face.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah, so that's about what they look like. They're not that big. This particular species of three toed sloth is about two feet long from head to tail. I think they have a tail, but you can't really see it. If they do have one. It's very, very short and you c,an't see it.
Christian: It's a little nubby.
Ellen: Yeah, just a little nub. So it's a little guy. Oh, two feet that is 60 centimeters or, I don't know, maybe chicken and a half, two chickens maybe.
Christian: Here we go.
Ellen: You thought I forgot.
Christian: Yeah. Hoped, I suppose.
Ellen: I'm back on that. They are, they get up to about 14 pounds, which is about 6.5 kilograms. You can think of this as about Puppy sized. That's our dog by the way. Not like a puppy, like our dog named puppy.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: So about the size of our dog. You can find these sloths in the tropical forest of central and South America, kind of all over the place. They have a pretty wide range where you can find them. Their taxonomic order is called Pilosa, which we have actually talked about before when we talked about the tamandua. They're in the same order as them.
Christian: I can see that, with their lil... hands.
Ellen: Yeah, with the claw hands. Yeah. So, this three toed-sloths is one of four species of three-toed sloths,-and there are also two species of two toed sloths. But the other members of the Pilosa family include anteaters and tamanduas. Yup. If you want to learn more about the tamandua, you can go back and listen to episode 12. So yeah, that's just a little bit of background information for the sloth. So, effectiveness for the three-toed sloth. This was- this surprised me because I picked the sloth thinking I was going to have something to dunk on, and thinking I was going to be able to just give it a trash effectiveness score. I gave it a 6 out of 10. My intention here is to shift the narrative on the sloth, because I think that they get a lot of negativity because people aren't interpreting what they do, maybe not according to what the sloths are really going for. That will make sense in a second.
Christian: Sure, sure.
Ellen: Of course, the sloth is named for how slow they are, right. That's the name, sloth.
Christian: Se, I was going to ask, did the name come first or did the animal?
Ellen: The word sloth was already like used for the sin of sloth, being like very slow and lazy.
Christian: Makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah. So the sloth they is named for how slow they are. Even in other languages, give it names that mean like slow or like one who is lazy or something like that. So their top speed is only around .15 miles per hour, or .24 kilometers per hour. They're incredibly slow and by the way, that's like, as fast as they get. That's like, they're being attacked and they're trying to like flee from a predator. That's still their top speed. They are just incredibly slow and they just can't go any faster than that. Like they literally do not have the muscular capability to go faster than that.
Christian: Oh well.
Ellen: So they're so slow. In fact, that algae and fungi grow in their fur and bugs nest in it. So the sloth's fur is just one big living ecosystem. They have a whole world growing in their fur. So a lot of times when you see a sloth, I mentioned that their fur is gray or brown, when you see them in the wild, they're green. And that's not because of their fur. It's because of the plants growing in their fur.
Christian: Nice.
Ellen: Yeah, it's really cool. Even their metabolism is really, really slow. So they, all they eat is like, twigs and leaves and stuff. Like very, very fibrous and not very nutritionally dense food. It can take them up to an entire month to digest one meal.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: Yeah. It takes them so incredibly long to digest their food. Their metabolism is just painfully slow and it's kind of thought that their lifestyle has become so slow-paced in response to how low calorie and low nutrition their diet is. Because they're not getting a lot of energy input from their food, so they have a very slow metabolism and just kind of like, slow everything because of that. We talked about this a little bit with a panda, right?
Christian: Yes, yes.
Ellen: So their body has kind of adjusted to adapt to their terrible diet.
Christian: So much so they were like, uhhh I'm not gonna go up this hill. I guess I live somewhere else now. Bye.
Ellen: In the same vein. So, what's actually kind of interesting about their metabolism is that they can slow their metabolism all the way to a complete halt when the temperature around them increases. So if it gets too hot around them, they can completely shut their metabolism down and go into like, something similar to a state of torpor because it prevents them from wasting energy and overheating when it gets too hot.
Christian: As a Floridian, I can relate to this.
Ellen: Yes, we also nap when it's too hot.
Christian: I'm just gonna out sleep the weather.
Ellen: Maybe when I wake up, the air won't be on fire. We could try that. Their just painful slowness makes people often question why are they not extinct? How have they not been completely hunted into eradication? What's the deal? They cannot do anything. So it's true that they're pretty defenseless when they're being hunted by a predator. They cannot fight back because of how slow they are. They can fight back if it's like something small. There's a video of a very, very young harpy eagle trying to take a sloth and it actually like takes a couple of swings with its claws and the harpy, the eagle leaves it alone. Now that being said, this is a baby harpy eagle, right? If it had been an adult, it probably wouldn't have been any contest.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: But, so here's the thing, they're up against jungle predators, like the harpy eagle and like the jaguar and the puma and things like that that definitely have the agility game completely cornered. They are not going to outrun that. Like they, I feel like they've kind of, evolutionarily speaking, they've like realized that they're not going to outrun those predators. So they've taken a different approach. So rather than thinking of their slow speed and their just super slowed down lifestyle as something like laziness or ineffectiveness, I want to think of that as stealth.
Christian: Ah!
Ellen: It's a stealth mechanism. So they're so incredibly slow that it's a form of camouflage. They blend in with the tree branches around them just by being so incredibly slow that you can't see them move. Because a lot of their predators have very good vision and are looking for things moving around in the trees.
Christian: That's true.
Ellen: So they move around very slowly so the predators don't even see them in the first place. So they don't have to run from the predator cause the predator doesn't see them. So it's just, it's just a different tactic. Rather than evasion, they're evading by stealth by not being detected. So actually that- what I mentioned earlier about algae growing in their fur, that's actually a symbiotic relationship between them and the algae. So that flora growing in their fur makes them green, that improves their camouflage against canopy foliage.
Christian: Kinda like a built in Ghillie suit.
Ellen: *whispers* What's a ghillie suit?
Christian: Oh, it's a military thing. You probably see it on movies and stuff. Like a sniper has like the suit on that has a bunch of rags and leaves and stuff.
Ellen: Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Christian: That's a Ghillie suit.
Ellen: Okay. All right. Yes, it's that, yeah. They have just plants growing in their fur, so it makes them blend in a lot better with the trees.
Christian: And it's probably the same plants that are growing on the trees.
Ellen: It's mostly like algae and you know, little little bits of fungus and stuff. So yeah, it just makes them look like the surrounding foliage. So the next thing that I want to talk about, other than like their incredible camouflage that really goes along very, very well with how slowly they move is you might not look at them and think that they're strong, but they're incredibly strong.
Christian: Really?
Ellen: Yes. So they hang from tree branches using their really, really long claws, with their arms being twice as long as their legs and their very strong grip. They often will stay gripped to the tree even after they have died.
Christian: Whoa.
Ellen: They will stay hanging onto the tree even after they're dead. So the reason that they have such a strong grip is because their muscles are largely made of these fibers called slow twitch fibers that allow them to sustain exertion for a very, very long time without using a lot of energy. So in order to think about how strong they have to be, think if you have, for example, a gymnast who is trying to move from maybe one bar to another bar nearby. But having to do that over like 30 minutes.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: And having to hang from one arm from, you know, holding up their entire body weight with one arm for like 30 minutes. Right? You start shaking, you, you know your muscles give out and you fall. The sloth will just chill there. Like the sloth can hold its body up with its arms and just very, very slowly move from one branch to another like it's nothing. They can hold their whole body up, no problem..
Christian: That's intense.
Ellen: They're extremely strong. It makes sense when you think about it because since they do move so slowly, they have to be able to hold themselves up for much longer periods of time than, for example, a monkey that's like jumping from one tree to another or maybe they're swinging from a branch or something like that. They don't have to be holding themselves up for very long because they're very quickly jumping from one place to another. But the sloth is just, through sheer power is climbing very, very slowly from one place to another.
Christian: What if it's, what if it goes really slow just to flex on all the animals in the forest? Like, yeah, this isn't nothing, I'm just gonna...
Ellen: It's a power move?
Christian: I'm going to take three days to travel um, uh, like 500 feet. But that's okay.
Ellen: They sleep a lot. They don't sleep as much as people once thought they did. It was once thought that they slept up to 20 hours a day, which in captivity sometimes they do. But in the wild it's actually closer to like 9. They don't sleep too much more than humans too. They do sleep a lot, but not as much as we thought they did.
Christian: I mean, when you go that slow, you have to make good use of your time.
Ellen: That's literally what they're all about. Like their entire physical build is meant to completely optimize their energy conservation. Like their entire goal with existing is to be as thrifty as they possibly can with the very little energy that they have. Cause they're getting so little energy from their diet. Right? They have to be very sparing with how they're using their energy. Yeah. But they're very good at that because their types of muscles are just very, very good at sustaining exertion without having to burn a lot of energy, which is like, I hadn't ever thought of it in those terms. I just thought they were being slow and lazy just cause they didn't feel like it. So, due to the fact that their muscles do move so slowly, they actually can't shiver to warm themselves up. Like their muscles can't like, twitch or shiver to increase their body temperature, so they actually can't thermoregulate like other mammals can. They have to sunbathe to maintain their body temperature, so they have to like go up to the top of the tree and find a good spot to bask in the sun to keep their temperature up. So unfortunately that puts them directly in the line of sight for harpy eagles who have very, very keen eyesight and they are very, very fast and very big and strong. So kind of the hardest possible counter to the sloth. Like you can look it up on YouTube. I spent like, all day yesterday watching videos of harpy eagles just plucking these sloths right out of the tree like it is nothing. Like they just, they swoop in and like, without even stopping, they just swoop in, grab the sloth and then fly right off with it. Yeah. So unfortunately they put themselves in a position where they're very vulnerable to that when they have to sunbathe. So that was one of my deductions for their effectiveness.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: They are surprisingly very good swimmers. They're good at swimming, which is weird. They actually travel much more quickly in the water than they do on land and sometimes, since they are faster in the water, sometimes they'll drop down directly into the water from the tree because it's faster for them to swim. They are naturally buoyant. They float just naturally.
Christian: The fur probably helps.
Ellen: They have like a downy undercoat that probably traps a lot of air, but actually the biggest factor to their buoyancy is the fact that since they do eat mostly just leaves and twigs, their body produces a lot of gas, so they're full of gas that keeps them afloat. That's not a joke. I'm not kidding.
Christian: So what you're telling me...
Ellen: Yes.
Christian: They're fart boats.
Ellen: Yes. Technically speaking, yes, it's a fart boat. They also, something that is really kind of interesting and weird about them is that most mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae. So neck bones, most of us have seven. We have seven drafts up, seven. Most of us have seven. The sloth has nine cervical vertebrae. And the significance of this is that it allows them to rotate their head like an owl up to up to 300 degrees.
Christian: I don't like that.
Ellen: So they can- well, so this goes back, this ties back into them conserving energy. This lets them have a very wide range of vision without having to adjust their whole body position. So without having to exert all of their muscles into turning around, they can just turn their head and see. Now the problem with this, though, is that they have very poor eyesight. They can't see very good at all. They really can't. I saw that their eyesight works best in low light, but they're like equal parts diurnal and nocturnal. So like they're still active during the daytime. They just, they can't see real good. And also another thing to think about is that like, yeah, they can see threats coming from any angle, but what are they going to do? Run? Like what do you do? Their kind of primary defense mechanism is just staying still. So, I guess if they saw something that they perceived as a threat, they would know just to not move until it's gone. But so they at least have a little bit of threat detection possibility.
Christian: No real plan B there though.
Ellen: That's kind of my whole thing that I took off four points for their effectiveness for, is that they have a pretty good strategy for not being hunted. But man, I mean once a predator identifies that they're there, like once they are detected, it's just game over. There's so little they can do about it.
Christian: They could try being not tasty.
Ellen: I mean I would imagine they're probably not.
Christian: I mean if things are eating them.
Ellen: Their fur is full of mushrooms, so I'm gonna say gross. Nasty.
Christian: That could be a plus for some.
Ellen: For you, I'm sure. So on land they are worthless. Completely pitiful. Their little back legs are so short and weak that they cannot walk at all. They have to use their front claws to drag themselves forward in just a very sad crawl. It's very bad. They actually do have to come down to land to use the bathroom. So about once or twice a week they have to come down to the ground to use the bathroom.
Christian: That's unfortunate.
Ellen: Yes, and so at this point they are just completely easy pickings for literally anything bigger than them that wants to eat them. Like puma, jaguar doesn't matter. They can just scoop them right up right off the ground.
Christian: It's too bad they don't do the bat tactic of theirs, kind of hanging down and doing your business.
Ellen: It's like, clearly that's an option. Y'all. Figure it out. I did see something that said that sloths do this, they go to the bathroom, they go down to the ground to use the bathroom in order to leave their scent markings there. So to communicate to the other sloths via scent like where they are, and this is especially useful for females when they're in heat and ready to mate, that they will do this a lot. That at that point when they're in heat, they will actually go down to use the bathroom every day just to kind of get their scent out there so that other sloths will smell it and know. Yeah. Really my biggest deductions here were the complete defenselessness that they have, but I did want to give them a lot of points for the fact that they have really just completely overhauled their entire body to be optimized for stealth.
Christian: Yeah, for sure.
Ellen: So I figured that they deserved a lot of credit for that. So, moving on to ingenuity, this is where the sloths is driving the struggle bus. The sloth has really fallen behind here. I gave it a 4 out of 10 for ingenuity.
Christian: Alright.
Ellen: Which is surprising for a mammal. I feel like mammals tend to be pretty clever, but so I did give them 4 points though. So I'm going to start with the positives because that's how I am. Something that's interesting is that even though their habitat has so much biological diversity, like just think of how many types of plants and trees that there are in the rainforest, there's just so many, even though there's so much biological diversity, individual sloths have different preferences for different types of trees. Even different slots of the same species will only have maybe like eight or nine different types of trees that they like. So this varies among individuals and they're particularly picky about what types of trees they will visit and what types of foliage they will eat. But this serves a purpose. This allows multiple sloths to share habitat ranges without fighting over resources so they can share the same territory range without worrying like, well he's in my tree eating my leaves. Because it's like he doesn't want your leaves cause he likes a different type of leaf. So I thought that was pretty cool. That's a pretty good way of making the most of their space.
Christian: What would a sloth fight even look like?
Ellen: It's not great. Have you ever seen like battle bots?
Christian: I think so?
Ellen: Have you ever seen like really bad battlebots?
Christian: Just kind of punch themselves.
Ellen: Maybe like a battlebot that has like these three knives attached to it, but the motor on it is kind of busted or it has low battery or something. So the knives are just kind of like slowly rotating towards each other. It's not great. Another thing that I thought was pretty clever of them is that when they do go to the ground to use the bathroom, they move away from where they typically like to hang out. So this prevents predators from being able to track them based on the scent they leave behind from their waste. So they do kind of leave their hangout zone to go to the bathroom.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: They have a very, very detailed and thorough mental map of their territory. So they know exactly where every little tree, every little plant, they know where everything is, completely have the whole thing memorized. So they do it like that because since they are trying to conserve as much energy as they can, they have to know the best possible way to get from point A to point B. They have to know which, what is the path of least resistance for them. How can they get there without, you know, wasting four days getting there when they could have only got there in one. Cause they're so slow, right? Like the tiniest little detour takes like six hours out of their day.
Christian: It's the classic shortest path problem.
Ellen: Yep. They're pretty good at knowing their way around their territory. However, their improvisational ability is severely lacking. So since they do have such a detailed memory map of their territory, if anything about that territory changes, they're completely stumped and they have no idea what to do. They're just completely at a loss. They have no idea. This is a quote I would like to drop in. This is from a mental floss article titled "The Human Who Teaches Orphan Sloths How to be Wild Animals" by author Jen Pinkowski on April 29th of 2017, and this is about the zoologist, Becky cliff. So, "Cliffe has attempted to measure [sloth intelligence]. “It didn’t go well,” she admits. They placed a three-toed sloth in an outdoor tree maze. It didn’t move. At all. “We gave up in the end. When sloths aren’t sure what’s going on or where they are, they sit still. That’s their defense mechanism.” Cliffe says, “I don’t think they’re intelligent in the way you think a monkey or a dog is intelligent, but they’re smart in their own way in their mental maps and their memory.” In her six years of tracking, she could predict which branch of which tree they’d be on during a given day. “But if you cut that tree down, they’d be stumped. I think they’re smart in the ways they need to be, but beyond that, there’s not much there.” So direct quote from zoologist studying sloths, not much there. So that's my 4 out of 10 for their ingenuity. This brings us to aesthetics. I gave them a pretty solid 6 out of 10. Not Great. Um, especially when you compare them to the two-toed sloth that is much cuter. The two toed sloth is the one that has kind of like a little piggy face.
Christian: Is the one that you see in like... Let me think, how about Zootopia?
Ellen: No, actually the three-toed sloths is the one working the DMV in Zootopia? That's a three toed slot. The two toed sloth is the one that has kind of a little, I think of it as a little pig face. The three toed sloth I think is significantly less cute than the two toed sloth. But I still gave it a 6 out of 10 cause it's still kind of cute. They had- I think the black bands around their eyes give them kind of a sad expression, which you know, I'm kind of a sucker for sad eyes. I think that's cute. Um, I think they look like a cuddly Sasquatch. It's just what they look like, with the mattered for and the long arms and stuff. It's a cuddly Sasquatch.
Christian: Much easier to take a picture of.
Ellen: That's for sure. Got those high res jpegs. They actually are super like cuddly, like cuddling and touching each other as like an important part of their development. And since they do like, need to be clinging to trees and stuff, when sloths are kept in captivity a lot of times like baby sloths and stuff, they'll provide stuffed animals and things for the sloths to cuddle. Yeah cause cuddling is very important to them. So that's my 6 out of 10 for their aesthetics.
Christian: Very cute.
Ellen: I'm going to wrap up with a couple of final little miscellaneous info. Their conservation status is of least concern.
Christian: That's surprising.
Ellen: They are fine. Of course being arboreal, they are threatened by the loss of habitat due to deforestation, but all things considered, their population numbers are currently doing fine.
Christian: Alright!
Ellen: I was surprised at that because my expectation going into this was that they were terrible and I was thinking how could they possibly, how could they possibly be thriving? Like how could they be successful at all?
Christian: I guess the stealth thing really works.
Ellen: It works so good. Do you want to know how good it works?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Guess their lifespan in the wild.
Christian: I 'm gonna guess... 40 years.
Ellen: 30 to 40 years.
Christian: DANG.
Ellen: 30 to 40 years. Yeah. 30 to 40 years of not getting eaten by jaguars by just being so darn slow. So right, Like I feel like people aren't giving them enough credit for their stealth capabilities because people are thinking of how slow they are and comparing that to the evasive tactics of different animals. Right? Things like monkeys or deer or something like that, like their strat is to as fast as they can to get away from predators, but the sloth has really dialed in to just not being hunted in the first place. And it's working out great for them.
Christian: Kind of like turtles, right? Like they can be slow because they have a very good defense.
Ellen: Yeah. It's like you don't need to be fast at that point. But so that's why I gave them a 6 out of 10 for their effectiveness because I feel like that was what they were trying to do, what their sort of intention was with the way they developed was they were trying to be sneaky. So, I mean you can't argue with results.
Christian: For sure.
Ellen: Least concern?
Christian: In a rain forest? Yeah.
Ellen: And with that kind of lifespan? That's insane. You can't argue with that. They're doing great. They're doing good at what they're doing. Of course, I had to give them some knocks for being otherwise entirely defenseless. There are videos on youtube of harpy, eagles, jaguars, pumas, all those sorts of things, just kind of snatchin sloths right up. So, it's really pitiful to watch. If you just watch those, you think, oh my gosh, the sloth is the worst. It's so terrible. How are they even still alive? But...
Christian: Question.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: Earlier you mentioned that they can die still holding onto a tree. Are there places where there are like, sloths skeletons just kind of...
Ellen: I would have to guess that at the point where they die holding onto a tree, they probably at that point are then eaten by scavengers.
Christian: That's true.
Ellen: Right? Probably like, bugs will eat them, like some sort of scavenger, will probably eat them. Like once they start to decompose, right? Probably things will come by and eat them at that point. Things die in the jungle all the time and you don't normally see skeletons just laying around. Like nature has a way of reclaiming what's hers.
Christian: For sure.
Ellen: Yeah. So that's the sloth.
Christian: Alright. Thanks honey, that was very informative.
Ellen: Not our, uh, most athletic animal yet, but has some interesting adaptations.
Christian: He's careful and stealthy.
Ellen: Yes, I can, I can vibe with that. It's a good animal. Alright, well that's all we had for this week. I'd like to thank our listeners who have been tuning in every week and letting us know what you thought and also telling your friends about us. We've been seeing a lot of growth and it's been going really, really well. So we're very thankful for that. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Just search the title of our show and you'll find us. I would like to gently beg that if you use Facebook, please join the group.
Christian: Oh yes! We got a new group!
Ellen: We have a brand new Facebook group and it is called Just the Zoo of Us: Official Friend Squad, and it is so much fun. And we share, um, just kind of any animal related content that stumbles across our news feeds, which I follow like 86 different zoos and aquariums, so my news feed is pretty much mostly just animal stuff, but so yeah, that's where we're hanging out with our listeners and followers and stuff. So, so come join us and hang out on our Facebook.
Christian: Yeah!
Ellen: If you have an animal species you'd like to hear us review, you can submit those to us either on social media or at thezooofus@gmail.com a transcript of this episode will be made available at justthezooofus.home.blog, I've been slacking a little bit on the transcripts because they are very difficult to make and they take a lot of time, but I'm still working on it. But we're getting all those up.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: And our last little note, I'd like to thank Louie Zong for the use of his song Adventuring off of his album. Bee Sides.
Christian: Yup. I wake up to that song sometimes in my head.
Ellen: It's a good one to wake up to.
Christian: It is! Like, alright, time to get up!
Ellen: It sets a good little, it sets a good mood for the day. Put's a little spring in your step.
Christian: Right?
Ellen: But check out all of his other work too. He's, he's the best and everything he does is great and perfect.
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: Alright, well that's all I had for this week.
Christian: It's good stuff, honey.
Ellen: Thanks, you too. I love you.
Christian: I love you!
Ellen: Bye!
Christian: Bye everyone.