Brown, gray, and black sloths. Sloths with raccoon faces, long hair, or short, wiry hair. All of them spend 70% of their time sleeping, which is what gives sloths a reputation for laziness. Their top speed is 15 feet per minute.

Sloths are slow, but they are actually green in the jungles of South and Central America, where they live in the wild. A mixture of algae and non-parasitic insects live permanently on their coats, a mechanism that is designed to thwart predators such as eagles. Sloths are wild and should not be kept as pets.

Sloths are as big as small dogs, and they cling to their mothers during their first year of life. This is one of the great things about sloths; they love to hug. Orphaned baby sloths in the sanctuary are given stuffed animals to cling to, and sometimes they are choosy about which stuffed animals are acceptable to them! This book has striking photography and depicts the idiosyncratic personalities of the different species of two- and three-toed sloths under the sanctuary’s care.

A Little Book of Sloth by Lucy Cooke, 2013

This was a very informative book about sloths, and it was refreshing to find that all of the sloths in the book, from the Sloth Sanctuary, look happy and adorable.

• Books about sloths
• Sloth Appreciation Society   
• Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica  (orphaned and injured sloths)