ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
13 
Contribution, Number 122. 
THE LEISURELY SLOTH 
By William Beebe 
I F we tell a person that the Three-toed Sloth 
is an Edentate mammal of the Subclass Eu- 
theria, autochthonous to the Neotropical 
Region, our efforts at conversation may be 
coldly received. If we make the statement 
that the sloth is the slowest animal in the world, 
we at once have our listener’s attention. 
During the past summer I spent considerable 
time in studying the Three-toed Sloth at the 
Research Station in Guiana, and was able to 
watch many adults, half-grown individuals 
and new-born young. Lacking wire for a large 
enclosure, I devised a scheme which was quite 
successful. I had a circular trench or moat 
dug in the compound of the bungalow, three 
feet wide and three deep, enclosing a grassy 
island fifteen feet across, and planting several 
small trees on this, I hung up whatever sloths 
I wished to study and left them to themselves. 
Morning and night, branches of their food 
leaves, Cecropia, were provided, and from the 
sloths’ point of view life had no more to offer. 
In preparing my material for monographic 
publication I reviewed the writings of early trav¬ 
ellers, and found many amusing tales. Like any 
pronounced characteristic of sloths or men, the 
deliberateness of action and life of these crea¬ 
tures was greatly exaggerated. One of the 
quaintest accounts was written four hundred 
years ago by Gonzalo De Oviedo. He says in 
part, “There is another strange beast the 
Spaniards call the Light Dogge, which is one 
of the slowest beasts and so heavie and dull in 
mooving that it can scarsely goe fiftie pases in 
a whole day. Their neekes are high and 
straight, and all equal! like the pestle of a 
morter, without making any proportion of 
similitude of a head, or any difference except 
in the noddle, and in the tops of their neekes. 
They have little mouthes, and moove their 
neekes from one side to another, as though 
they were astonished: their ehiefe desire and 
delight is to cleave and sticke fast unto Trees, 
whereunto cleaving fast, they mount up little by 
little, staying themselves by their long claws. 
Their voice is much differing from other beasts, 
for they sing onely in the night, and that con¬ 
tinually from time to time, singing ever six 
notes one higher than another. Sometimes the 
Christian men find these beasts, and bring them 
home to their houses, where also they creepe 
all about with their naturall slownesse. I could 
never perceive other but that they live onely 
of Aire: because they ever turne their heads 
and mouthes toward that part where the wind 
bloweth most, whereby may be considered that 
they take most pleasure in the Aire. They bite 
not, nor yet can bite, having very little 
mouthes: they are not venemous or noyous any 
way, but altogether brutish, and utterly un¬ 
profitable and without commoditie yet known 
to men.” 
This delightful naturalist confuses the sloth 
with one of the giant tropical goatsuckers which 
calls only in the night; and while I have known 
a sloth to go six weeks without touching food, 
yet there comes a time when something more 
substantial than “aire” is required. After 
weeks and months of study from every point 
of view I find the sloth far from “utterly un¬ 
profitable.” 
I concentrated on the Three-toed species as 
it will not live out of its native land. It ab¬ 
solutely refuses all food except the leaves and 
buds of the Cecropia, and the extinction of this 
tree would probably mean the passing of this 
race of sloths from the earth. 
