Sloths
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Discover how much you really know about sloths with our comprehensive free 38-question trivia quiz with answers. From their incredible slowness to their unique three-toed and two-toed varieties, this quiz covers everything about these fascinating tree-dwelling mammals. Challenge yourself and learn surprising facts about one of nature's most intriguing creatures!
30 of 38 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do two-toed and three-toed sloths have the same number of?
Hind toes
Hind toes: every sloth has three on each back foot, and the names count only the front limbs, where two-toed sloths have two digits, which is why some people call them two-fingered sloths.
Q 02In what geographical region are sloths primarily found?
Central and South American rainforests
Central and South American rainforests are the only home of living sloths: their metabolism is so slow that they cannot keep warm outside the tropics.
Q 03Sloths are slow in the trees, but what are they surprisingly good at?
Swimming
Swimming: a sloth will sometimes drop from its branch straight into a river and pull itself across with its long arms.
Q 04Sloths eat, sleep and usually even do what while hanging from a branch?
Give birth
Give birth: a sloth mother usually delivers her single baby while hanging from a branch, and the newborn has to cling to her fur from its first moment.
Q 05What does a sloth's very low metabolic rate lead to?
Food digestion takes an exceptionally long time
Food digestion takes an exceptionally long time: no other mammal digests more slowly, and a sloth's stomach is kept constantly full of fermenting leaves.
Q 06Why do sloths move so slowly?
To conserve energy from their low-calorie diet
To conserve energy from their low-calorie diet: leaves supply so little fuel that sloths burn energy at roughly half the rate expected for a mammal of their size.
Q 07What grows in a sloth's shaggy coat and tints it in the wet season?
Green algae
Green algae, not the hair itself, supply the colour: a sloth's long outer coat is really pale brown to grey, and the green is a living growth on it.
Q 08Three-toed sloths climb all the way down to the ground, dig a hole and relieve themselves roughly how often?
About once a week
About once a week, three-toed sloths climb down, dig a small hole at the foot of a tree and cover it afterwards; why they take the risk instead of going from the canopy is still debated.
Q 09How do baby sloths learn which leaves to eat?
By licking their mother's lips
By licking their mother's lips: a baby samples the leaves she is chewing and so inherits her taste for particular trees.
Q 10Two-toed and three-toed sloths evolved their upside-down tree life separately, making them a textbook case of what?
Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution: protein and DNA studies place two-toed sloths beside the extinct Mylodon and three-toed sloths with the giant megatherioid ground sloths, so each line took to the trees on its own.
Q 11Besides sloths, which mammal breaks the rule of seven neck vertebrae?
Manatees
Manatees make do with six; even the giraffe, with its two-metre neck, has the standard seven.
Q 12What do a sloth's enamel-free, peg-like teeth do all its life?
Keep growing
Keep growing: with no enamel cap, each peg of dentine is worn down as the sloth chews its leaves, so it never stops growing to make up the loss.
Q 13The sloth's Spanish name, perezoso, is also the everyday Spanish word for what?
Lazy
Lazy: perezoso, like the French paresseux and the German Faultier, simply calls the animal a lazybones, and the English word sloth itself first meant laziness.
Q 21Why do sloths often frustrate hunters even after being shot from below?
They stay hooked in place on the branch
They stay hooked in place on the branch: a sloth's curved claws lock around the limb and keep the body hanging even after death, so a shot animal often never drops to the hunter below.
Q 22Unlike their leaf-eating three-toed cousins, two-toed sloths occasionally eat which of these?
Insects
Insects: two-toed sloths live mostly on leaves and fruit but will snack on the odd grub, which is why they are classed as omnivores while three-toed sloths keep almost wholly to leaves.
Q 23Compared with most mammals of their size, sloths have far less of which tissue?
Muscle
Q 14Which ability do three-toed sloths owe to the extra bones in their necks?
Turning their heads 270 degrees
Turning their heads 270 degrees: three-toed sloths have eight or nine neck vertebrae where almost every other mammal has seven, so they can look well behind them on either side.
Q 15Sloths' reputation for sleeping 15 or more hours a day came from studying which animals?
Captive sloths
Captive sloths: laboratory animals slept nearly 16 hours a day, but brain-wave recorders fitted to wild three-toed sloths in 2008 showed they sleep less than 10.
Q 16What is a major risk for sloths when they descend to the forest floor?
Predation
Predation: almost helpless out of the trees, a sloth on the ground is within easy reach of jaguars and ocelots, which is why it comes down so rarely.
Q 17How do sloths often make up for their poor control of body temperature?
By sunning themselves
By sunning themselves: like cold-blooded animals, sloths climb into the sun to warm up, because their body temperature drifts with the air around them.
Q 18Which of these sloths was listed as 'critically endangered' on the IUCN Red List in 2025?
Pygmy three-toed
Pygmy three-toed sloths live only on Isla Escudo de Veraguas, a small island off Panama, where habitat loss and hunting put the whole species at risk.
Q 19Which two senses do sloths mainly rely on to find food?
Smell and touch
Smell and touch: with weak eyesight and hearing, a sloth finds food by scent and feel, then pulls it to its mouth with its claws.
Q 20A sloth's fur grows from belly to back, the reverse of most mammals, to help with what?
Shedding rain while upside down
Shedding rain while upside down: because a sloth spends its life hanging belly-up, its hair parts along the stomach and points toward the back, so water runs straight off.
Muscle makes up only about a quarter to 30 percent of a sloth's weight, against 40 percent or more in most mammals, which is why a cold sloth cannot shiver to warm up.
Q 24How big could extinct ground sloths such as Megatherium grow?
As big as an elephant
As big as an elephant: Megatherium weighed up to about four tonnes, and it could rear up on its hind legs to reach leaves far above the ground.
Q 25The name of the mammal order Pilosa, to which sloths belong, comes from the Latin for what?
Hairy
Hairy: Pilosa comes from the Latin pilosus, from pilus, 'hair', the same root that gives English 'depilate', a fair label for animals with coats this shaggy.
Q 26Sloths are most closely related to which animals, sharing the order Pilosa with them?
Anteaters
Anteaters are the sloths' closest relatives despite their very different lives: toothless insect-eaters and slow tree-climbers together make up the order Pilosa, with armadillos as their next of kin.
Q 27Far from the Amazon, the maned sloth survives only in which shrinking Brazilian forest?
Atlantic Forest
Atlantic Forest: the maned sloth lives only in fragments of this coastal rainforest, and the clearing of its trees is the main threat to the animal's survival.
Q 28Which US president named the giant ground sloth Megalonyx from its fossil claws?
Jefferson
Jefferson described the animal's huge claw bones to the American Philosophical Society in 1797 and named it Megalonyx, 'great claw'; the species Megalonyx jeffersonii was later named in his honour.
Q 29How do sloths get across open ground between trees?
They drag themselves by their claws
They drag themselves by their claws: sloth limbs are built for hanging, not for bearing weight, so on the ground the animal must grip something and haul its body forward.
Q 30Which of these large birds is a primary aerial predator of sloths?
Harpy Eagle
The Harpy Eagle, one of the world's largest and most powerful eagles, is a primary aerial predator of sloths, snatching them from the trees with powerful talons.