Sloths have a reputation for a being one of the slowest moving animals on earth. In fact, a sloth's slow lifestyle allows algae to grow in its fur, causing it to develop a green tint.

Famous Sloth Names From Fiction

• A sloth goes to a bar to get drunk. After a long time and a lot of drinks the bartender asks the sloth why he is there. The sloth replies, 'I'm depressed, my wife is leaving me. I bet she's already halfway through the kitchen.'
• You might ask why a sloth would ever need to swim. A rain forest is wet overall but not usually very wet at the tops of its trees. Sloths have to move from tree to tree and area to area in search of food and mates. If they were unable to swim, then any stream would be impassable.

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Take a look at these 10 famous sloth names from fictional stories and movies worldwide. These are cool names if you have sloths as pets.

1. Ernesto (Spanish origin), meaning “sincere”. A cute name for a baby sloth.

2. Flash (American origin), meaning “bright light” from movie “Zootopia”.

3. Mervin (Welsh origin), meaning “Superior Lord”.

4. Peter (Greek origin), the cute baby sloth name means “stone”.

5. Priscilla (Roman origin), meaning “classical”.

6. Sid (English origin), diminutive of Sidney from the Iceage movie franchise.

7. Slakoth (Japanese origin), meaning “slack off”.

8. Slothilda (English origin), meaning “female sloth” from book “Slothilda: Living the sloth life”.

Why Sloths Are Cool Whip

9. Sparky (English origin), meaning “high-spirited” from book “Sparky!”.

10. Vigoroth (Japanese origin), meaning “vigorous” from Pokémon adventures.

Famous Sloth Names From Real Life

Check out these 10 names of some popular sloths from Sloth sanctuary, Diamente animal sanctuary, Kids Saving the Rainforest Wildlife Animal Sanctuary (KSTRWAS) in Costa Rica.

11. B-rad (English origin), meaning “broad lea”.

12. Buttercup (English origin), meaning “wildflower”.

13. Diesel (German origin), meaning “fuel”.

14. Ellen (Greek origin), meaning “bright”.

15. Kermie (Irish origin), meaning “freeman”.

16. Lucy (English origin), meaning “light”.

17. Mateo (Hebrew origin), meaning “God”.

18. Mia (Italian origin), meaning “mine”.

19. Pelota (Spanish origin), meaning “ball”.

20. Ubu (French origin), stands for cuddly sloth baby.

Funny Sloths Name Ideas

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For subtle naming ideas check out this list of 15 funny sloth name ideas. One of the fun facts about sloths, they cannot kill you but can hurt you using their large claws.

21. Bolt (English origin), meaning “fast”. It's funny because they're famously slow. Get it? Never mind...

22. Buzz (English origin), meaning sound type.

23. Cuddlebun (English origin), meaning “cuddly”.

24. Dozy (English origin), meaning “air headed”. One of the cute sloth names.

25. Furry (English origin), meaning “fur-like”. A lovely tree sloth name.

26. Joy (Latin origin), meaning “happiness”. A fun name for all types of sloths.

27. Katniss (English origin), meaning “fiery”. An adorable name for animals.

28. Michael (Hebrew origin), meaning “Godlike”.

29. Heckles (English origin), meaning “interrupt”.

30. Snuggles (English origin), meaning “snuggles”.

31. Simpleton Ed (English origin), meaning “simple”.

32. Simpson (American origin), meaning “simple”.

33. Sleepy Joe (English origin), meaning “snoozes”.

34. Snowy (English origin), meaning “snow”.

35. Squinty (English origin), meaning “squint”.

Cute Name Ideas For Sloths

One of the interesting sloth facts, aloths are not monkeys . These two mammals look alike but are neither internally nor structurally same. For cute sloths names ideas, check out below.

36. Cyrus (Persian origin), meaning “light”.

37. Luke (English origin), meaning “Lucas”.

38. Muriel (Irish origin), meaning “lively sea”. A lovely name for sloth babies.

Why Sloths Are Cool Animals

39. Noah (Babylonian origin), meaning “repose”.

40. Noel (Latin origin), meaning “Christmas”. A lovely name for animals.

41. Orion (Greek origin), meaning “dawning”. A lovely name for all sloth types.

42. Reuben (Hebrew origin), meaning “son”. One of the good sloth names.

Kidadl has lots of great baby names articles to inspire you. If you liked our suggestions for sloth names then do take a look at goat names. For something different, check out mythical horse names.

Sloths are medium-sized mammals that live in the Central and South American rainforests.

The sloth got its name from its slow movement, it is not lazy, just slow-moving. The sloth is the slowest mammal on Earth. In total, there are six species of sloth.

Sloths belong to the families ‘Megalonychidae’ and ‘Bradypodidae’, part of the order ‘Pilosa’. Most scientists call these two families the ‘Folivora’ suborder, while some call it ‘Phyllophaga’.

Family Bradypodidae

Genus (Three-toed sloths)

Pygmy Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus)
Maned Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus torquatus)
Pale-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus tridactylus)
Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus)

Family Megalonychidae

Genus (Two-toed sloths)

Linnaeus’s Two-toed Sloth (Choloepus didactylus)
Hoffmann’s Two-toed Sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni)

Sloth Characteristics

Sloths have a thick brown and slightly-greenish fur coat and are about the size of a cat around 2 feet (61 centimetres) long. Sloths have a short, flat head, big eyes, a short snout, a short or non-existent tail, long legs, tiny ears and sturdy, curved claws are on each foot. They use these claws to hang from trees. Sloths claws serve as their only natural defence. A cornered sloth may swipe at its attackers in an effort to scare them away or wound them. Despite the sloths apparent defencelessness, predators do not pose special problems. In the trees sloths have good camouflage and moving only slowly, do not attract attention. Only during their rare visits to ground level do they become vulnerable.

Some sloths have colonies of green algae encrusting their fur, both adding to the camouflage effect and providing some nutrients to the sloths, who lick the algae during grooming. Sloth fur exhibits specialized functions. The outer hairs grow in a direction opposite from that of other mammals. In most mammals, hairs grow towards the extremities, but because sloths spend so much time with their legs above their bodies, their hairs grow away from the extremities in order to provide protection from the elements while the sloth hangs upside down.

Sloths are quadrupeds (four-legged animals) who ‘walk’ upside-down along tree branches. Sloths only rarely venture to the ground and walk on the ground in an upright position. Sloths are very good at swimming.

Why Sloths Are Cool

Sloths have made extraordinary adaptations to an arboreal browsing lifestyle. Sloths have very large, specialized, slow-acting stomachs with multiple compartments in which symbiotic (the living together of two dissimilar organisms) bacteria break down the tough leaves.

Sloth Diet

Sloths are omnivores. They may eat insects, small lizards and carrion, however, their diet consists mostly of buds, tender shoots and leaves (including leaves from the cecropia tree). It used to be thought that sloths ate mostly cecropia leaves because they were often spotted in cecropia trees. It turns out that they also live in many other trees, but are not spotted there as easily as in cecropia trees.

Sloths have a low metabolic rate and a low body temperature (91° Fahrenheit). This keeps their food and water needs to a minimum. Sloths have small molars which they use to chew up their leafy food. Their stomach has many separate compartments that are used to digest the tough cellulose (a component of plant material that they eat).

As much as two-thirds of a well fed sloths body weight consists of the contents of its stomach and the digestive process can take as long as a month or more to complete. Even so, leaves provide little energy and sloths deal with this by a range of economy measures. They have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a creature of their size) and maintain low body temperatures when active (30 to 34 degrees Celsius or 86 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit) and still lower temperatures when resting.

Sloth Habitat

Sloths spend almost all of their lives in trees.

Sloth Behaviour

Sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside-down from tree branches. They eat, sleep, mate and give birth upside-down in the trees. Sloths hold onto tree branches with strong, curved claws that are on each of their four feet.

Male sloths are solitary, shy animals. Female sloths sometimes congregate together. Sloths are nocturnal, they are most active at night and sleep all day. They sleep about 15 to 18 hours each day, hanging upside down.

Sloths move only when necessary and even then very slowly. They have about half as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight. They can move at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator (4.5 metres (15 feet) per minute), but they burn large amounts of energy doing so. Sloths sometimes remain hanging from branches after death. On the ground their maximum speed is 1.5 metres (5 feet) per minute. They mostly move at 15 – 30 centimetres (0.5 – 1 feet) per minute.

Sloths are particularly partial to nesting in the crowns of palm trees where they can camouflage as coconuts. They come to the ground to urinate and defecate only about once a week.

Why Sloths Are Cool Facts

Sloth Reproduction

Sloths may live 10 – 20 years in the wild. Adult females produce a singe baby each year, however, sometimes the sloths lack of movement actually keeps females from finding males for longer than one year. They give birth upside down hanging from a tree branch. Infant sloths normally cling to their mothers fur, but occasionally fall off. Sloths are very sturdily built and rarely die from a fall. In some cases they die from a fall indirectly because the mothers prove unwilling to leave the safety of the trees to retrieve the young.

Sloth Predators

The main predators of sloths are the jaguar, the harpy eagle and humans. The majority of sloth deaths in Costa Rica are from contact with electrical lines and from poachers. Their claws also provide a further unexpected deterrent to human hunters – when hanging upside-down in a tree they are held in place by the claws themselves and often do not fall down even if shot from below.

A sloths main forms of protection are its camouflage (greatly increased by the coating of algae growing on its fur) and its very slow movement. These adaptations make the sloth virtually disappear in the rainforest canopy.

Sloth Conservation Status

Why Sloths Are Cool People

Although unable to survive outside the tropical rainforests of South and Central America, within that environment sloths are outstandingly successful creatures. They can account for as much as half the total energy consumption and two-thirds of the total terrestrial mammalian biomass in some areas. Of the six species, only one, the Maned Three-toed Sloth, has a classification of ‘endangered’ at present. The ongoing destruction of South Americas forests, however, may soon prove a threat to the others.