Was it when Kristen Bell had a meltdown after meeting a sloth for her birthday on "Ellen," or was it when Sloth from "The Goonies" screamed, "Hey, you guys!" that the world fell in love with sloths?
Either way, people around the globe have been spreading adorable sloth propaganda, and it needs to stop. You need to learn the truth about these disgusting, creepy animals before you share another "cute" sloth video on Facebook.
Sloths only urinate or defecate once a week.
Sloths have a very low metabolism and have to eat a lot to get the nutrients their body needs. Since it takes so long for a sloth to digest the food it eats, it only urinates or defecates about once a week. When they do, they do this weird li'l' dance that looks like this at the same bottom of a tree trunk, each and every time.
They have nasty diets.
Speaking of poop, they'll sometimes eat it — and not just their own poop but people poop, too. They'll even swim in it. Don't believe me? If this documented recording of a sloth venturing out of a human toilet doesn't stop you from loving them, then nothing will.
Sloths have up to four-inch-long claws.
If Freddy Krueger had a pet, it would be a sloth. Need I say more?
They grow algae on their fur.
Since sloths spend most of their time in a tree, they don't make showering a priority. A sloth's hair on its body serves as a habitat for colonies of algae, where moths then feed off of the algae and hide from predators. That's right — the disgusting slime you have to clean out of your home aquarium grows on these gross animals.
Sloths can retain their grip after death.
Sloths' muscles and limbs have been conditioned to climb trunks to find food and escape predators, so they spend most of their time in trees — so much time that the tree holds their very life in the balance, even after they've died. Sloths have been known to retain their grip on a branch after death, and they are often found still clinging to the very branch they were lounging from when they were alive.
"Lovely. We're sure that's not traumatic for sloth children. What if an adorable yet wretched baby sloth decides he wants to cuddle up and take a nap with his granny, only to find out nine to 14 hours later that Memaw is a carcass hanging from a tree like a piñata? And she's not filled with candy. She's filled with death." -Miami New Times
Sloths can turn their heads up to 360 degrees.
By now, I'd like to think that you're definitely grossed out by sloths, but if their out-of-this-world nastiness doesn't bother you, then the creepy side of sloths will. They can turn their necks anywhere from 270 to 360 degrees, depending on whether or not they are two- or three-toed. Imagine locking stares with this dark-eyed nonsense next time you look up at a tree:
They will actually bite you — after charging toward you.
Next time your idiotic self thinks it's a good idea to hang out with a sloth, remember that Dr. Donald E. Moore, a man who hates himself enough to study sloths at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, was once attacked by one. According to an interview conducted by Boing Boing, one day a sloth — for no good reason — came rushing towards him "upside down along a vine, as fast as a cat would run along the floor. She grabbed [him] and pulled [his] hand to her mouth and then bit." Last time I checked, that is not cute.
A dead sloth was once mistaken as an alien.
In the Cerro Azul region of Panama City, a group of teenagers got the scare of their life when they saw an unidentified creature floating their way in a river. After attacking the beast out of panic, they took a few photos of its body, hoping that sharing it online would help them and others identify what it was. It sparked several theories that stated it might have been some kind of alien, known as the "Panama E.T." Come to find out it was a sloth that had died in the river, causing its hair to fall out and make its skin look almost translucent. Gross.
Sloths weren't always seen as cute and cuddly.
Why didn't it stay this way? Oviedo y Valdes, a writer who provided one of the earliest descriptions of the sloth, didn’t find the creature worthy of his appreciation. In fact, he described it as one of the “uglier” and “more useless” creatures in the animal kingdom — just like how I'd describe it today.
If you're still crazy and thinking of tweeting that cute baby sloth GIF to your friend on Twitter, then promise me you'll remind yourself of what that little guy is going to grow up to be — full of poop and utterly terrifying.
