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Why does a sloth's fur turn green?

Imagine an animal that jumps from branch to branch at a speed of… 2 meters per minute. It's a sloth! It crawls so slowly that even a snail sometimes outpaces it. A sloth's heart beats half as slowly as a human's, and it takes a whole month to digest food! One leaf can float in its stomach for 30 days.

But why is the sloth so slow? In the jungles of South America, there are no fast predators in the trees. Instead, there are jaguars and anacondas down below. So the sloth decided: it's better to be invisible than to run away. And this contributed to a truly amazing discovery.

If you look closely at a sloth, you can see… a green tint! Real algae grows in its long fur. Yes, just like in a pond! A sloth’s fur has tiny cracks where rainwater collects. Algae spores fly in there and start growing. It turns out that a sloth is like a small tree that slowly creeps through the forest. The green color helps it blend in with the leaves and hide from predators.

And butterflies and tiny insects live in the fur of a sloth. A whole little world on one animal! Scientists have counted over 80 species of living creatures there. A sloth is a living ecosystem.

It's interesting that a sloth only comes down from a tree once a week to go to the toilet. It's a very dangerous journey, but why would he do it? And a sloth swims three times faster than it crawls along branches! Here's the slowest animal — it suddenly becomes more agile in the water.