480 
THE SAVAGE WORLD. 
and its black face is clear-shaven. His long claw-armed legs are so joined 
to his skeleton as to render it easy for him to hang without effort with his 
face to the sky and his back to 
the ground; his coloring, likewise, 
so increases his invisibility as to 
suggest another adaptation of the 
creature to its environment. Its 
home is in the tree-top, and it will 
never descend unless starvation 
drives it to a new source of sup¬ 
plies. Its paws have great strength, 
and if the animal is attacked by a 
dog while it is on the ground it 
will turn upon its back, and if it 
once succeeds in getting hold of the 
dog it will squeeze and claw it to 
death. The sloth is nocturnal, and 
while not preternaturally frisky even 
then, manifests more signs of life 
than during the day. When struck, 
it moans, but gives no other evidences 
of resentment. The sloth has become 
a symbol for sheer laziness, which 
it undoubtedly deserves because of its indifference under all circumstances, 
scarcely exhibiting enough spirit to retreat when danger threatens it. I 
believe no speci¬ 
men has ever been 
brought to Amer¬ 
ica, and in my 
travels abroad I 
have seen only a 
single one. This 
I happened upon 
in the beautiful 
zoological garden 
at Rotterdam, 
and which the 
keeper declared to 
me never moved 
except when it 
was feeding. The 
primitive sloth, 
whose remains 
are found in South 
America, was one 
of the largest of land animals, measuring some twenty-five feet in length. 
The Ai (Arctopithecus ai , or flaccidus ,) disturbs the silence and increases 
the weirdness of the Brazilian forests by its oft-repeated cry of az\ ai , at. 
The ai is a three-toed sloth; it is grayish-brown in color and is streaked on 
