Sloths are not lazy - they just have bad PR
The sloth is often regarded as one of the worlds laziest animals, sleeping for over 16 hours per day. But scientists now believe this is not the case and that it is only captive sloths which spend so long each day snoozing.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, caught sloths living in the rainforest of Panama and fitted them with a device that monitors sleep.
To their surprise they discovered the animals only slept for an average of 9.6 hours - compared with 16 hours for those in captivity.
Lead researcher Niels Rattenborg said: "The real exciting finding was that they only slept 9.6 hours a day, which is much less than what people popularly believed and less than had been observed in a previous study of sloths in captivity."
The work, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, attempts to find traits that predict whether an animal sleeps more or less than another species.
LINKS
Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Royal Society journal Biology Letters
Lead researcher Niels Rattenborg said: "The real exciting finding was that they only slept 9.6 hours a day, which is much less than what people popularly believed and less than had been observed in a previous study of sloths in captivity."
The work, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, attempts to find traits that predict whether an animal sleeps more or less than another species.
LINKS
Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Royal Society journal Biology Letters
