Miserable Aspect of the Sloth—His Beautiful Organisation for his Peculiar Mode of Life—His Rapid Movements in the Trees—His Means of Defence—His Tenacity of Life—Fable about the Sloth refuted—The Ai—The Unau—The Mylodon Robustus.

‘The piteous aspect, the sorrowful gestures, the lamentable cry of the Sloth, all combine to excite commiseration. While other animals assemble in herds, or roam in pairs through the boundless forest, the sloth leads a lonely life in those immeasurable solitudes, where the slowness of his movements exposes him to every attack. Harmless and frugal, like a pious anchorite, a few coarse leaves are all he asks for his support. On comparing him with other animals, you would say that his deformed organisation was a strange mixture of deficiency and superabundance. He has no cutting teeth, and though possessed of four stomachs, he still wants the long intestines of ruminating animals. His feet are without soles, nor can he move his toes separately. His hair is coarse and wiry, and its dull colour reminds one of grass withered by the blasts of surly winter. His legs appear deformed by the manner in which they are attached to the body, and his claws seem disproportionably long. Surely a creature so wretched and ill-formed stands last on the list of all the four-footed animals, and may justly accuse Nature of step-motherly neglect!’

When seeing a captured sloth painfully creeping along on even ground, sighing and moaning, and scarcely advancing a few steps after hours of awkward toil, the observer might well be disposed to acquiesce in the foregoing remarks, and to fancy he had discovered a flaw among the general beauty of the Creator’s works; but let him view the animal in the situation for which it was ordained, and he will soon retract his hasty judgment, and discover it to be no less perfect in its kind, and no less admirably fitted for its sphere of existence, than the most highly organised of the mammalian tribes.

For the sloth, in his wild state, spends his whole life in the trees, and never once touches the earth but through force or by accident. Like the monkey, he has been formed for an exclusively sylvan life, high above the ground, in the green canopy of the woods; but while the nimble simiÆ constantly live upon the branches, the sloth is doomed to spend his whole life under them. He moves, he rests, he sleeps suspended from the boughs of trees, a wonderfully strange way of life, for which no other four-footed animal of the Old or the New World has been destined.

And now examine his organisation with reference to this peculiar mode of existence, and all his seeming deficiencies and deformities will appear most admirably adapted to his wants, for these strong, muscular, preposterously long fore-feet, while the hinder extremities are comparatively short and weak, these slender toes armed with enormous claws, are evidently as well suited for clasping the rugged branch as the enormous hind-legs of the kangaroo for bounding over the arid plain. Indeed, in every case, we shall find the fundamental type or idea of the four extremities belonging to the vertebrated animals most admirably modified according to their wants: here shortened, there prolonged; here armed with claws, there terminating in a hoof; here coalescing to a tail, there assuming the shape of a fin; here clothed with feathers to cleave the air, there raised to the perfection of the human hand, the wonderful instrument of a still more wonderful intelligence; and who, seeing all this, can possibly believe that the world is ruled by chance, and not by an all-pervading and almighty power?

Thus the sloth, so helpless when removed from his native haunts, is far from exhibiting the same torpidity in his movements when seen in the place for which Nature fitted him.

‘One day, as we were crossing the Essequibo,’ says Mr. Waterton, ‘I saw a large sloth on the ground upon the bank; how he had got there nobody could tell; the Indian said he had never surprised a sloth in such a situation before: he would hardly have come there to drink, for both above and below the place the branches of the trees touched the water, and afforded him an easy and safe access to it. Be this as it may, though the trees were not above twenty yards from him, he could not make his way through the sand time enough to escape before we landed. As soon as we came up to him, he threw himself upon his back, and defended himself in gallant style with his fore-legs. “Come, poor fellow!” said I to him, “if thou hast got into a hobble to-day, thou shalt not suffer for it; I’ll take no advantage of thee in misfortune; the forest is large enough both for thee and me to rove in. Go thy ways up above, and enjoy thyself in these endless wilds; it is more than probable thou wilt never have another interview with man. So fare thee well.” On saying this I took up a long stick which was lying there, held it for him to hook on, and then conveyed him to a high and stately mora. He ascended with wonderful rapidity, and in about a minute he was almost at the top of the tree. He now went off in a side direction, and caught hold of the branch of a neighbouring tree; he then proceeded towards the heart of the forest. I stood looking on, lost in amazement at his singular mode of progress. I followed him with my eye till the intervening branches closed in betwixt us, and then lost sight for ever of the sloth. I was going to add that I never saw a sloth take to his heels in such earnest, but the expression will not do, for the sloth has no heels.’

The Indians, to whom no one will deny the credit of being acute observers of animal life, say that the sloth wanders principally when the wind blows. In calm weather he remains still, probably not liking to cling to the brittle extremity of the branches, lest they should break under his weight in passing from one tree to another; but as soon as the breeze rises, the branches of the neighbouring trees become interwoven, and then he seizes hold of them and pursues his journey in safety. There is seldom an entire day of calm in the forests of Guiana. The trade-wind generally sets in about ten o’clock in the morning, and since the sloth, as we have just seen, is able to travel at a good-round pace when he has branches to cling to, there is nothing to prevent him making a considerable way before the sun sinks, and the wind goes down.

During night, and while reposing in the daytime, the sloth constantly remains suspended by his feet, for his anatomy is such that he can feel comfortable in no other position. In this manner he will rest for hours together, expressing his satisfaction by a kind of purring, and from time to time his dismal voice may be heard resounding through the forest, and awakening at a distance a similar melancholy cry.

The colour of the sloth’s hair so strongly resembles the hue of the moss which grows on the trees, that the European finds it very difficult to make him out when he is at rest, and even the falcon-eyed Indian, accustomed from his earliest infancy to note the slightest signs of forest life, is hardly able to distinguish him from the branches to which he clings. This no doubt serves him as a protection against the attacks of many enemies; but, far from being helpless, his powerful claws and the peculiarly enduring strength of his long arms, make very efficient weapons of defence against the large tree snakes that may be tempted to make a meal of him.

The sloth possesses a remarkable tenacity of life, and withstands the dreadful effects of the wourali poison of the Macushi Indians longer than any other animal. Schomburgk slightly scratched a sloth in the upper lip, and rubbed a minimum of the venom in the wound, which did not even emit a drop of blood; he then carried the animal to a tree, which it began to climb, but after having reached a height of about twelve feet, it suddenly stopped, and swinging its head about from side to side, as if uncertain which way to go, tried to continue its ascent, which, however, it was unable to accomplish. First it let go one of its fore-feet, then the other, and remained attached with its hind-legs to the tree until, these also losing their power, it fell to the ground, where, without any of the convulsive motions or the oppressive breathing which generally mark the effect of the wourali, it expired in the thirteenth minute after the poison had been administered.

The sloths attain a length of about two feet and a half, and form two genera—the Unaus, with two-toed fore-feet and three-toed hinder extremities, and the AÏs, with three toes on each foot. Their way of living is the same, and their range is limited to the forests of Guiana and the Brazils. They bring forth and suckle their young like ordinary quadrupeds, and the young sloth, from the moment of its birth, adheres to the body of its parent till it acquires sufficient size and strength to shift for itself.