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Baby sloths learn what to eat by licking the lips of their mother. [49] All sloths eat the leaves of Cecropia . Two-toed sloths are omnivorous , with a diverse diet of insects , carrion , fruits , leaves and small lizards , ranging over up to 140 hectares (350 acres).
They eat primarily leaves, but also shoots, fruits, nuts, berries, bark, some native flowers, and even some small vertebrates. [20] In addition, when they cannot find food, they have been known to eat the algae that grow on their fur for nutrients. [21] They have also been observed using mineral licks.
Though two-toed sloths also eat buds, tender twigs, young plant shoots, fruits and flowers, most of their diets consist of tree leaves. [26] Two-toed sloths tend to eat younger leaves due to their higher nutritional content and easy digestibility in comparison with older leaves. [27]
Sloths eat and digest food very slowly; it can take them 30 days to digest just one leaf! Because of their slow metabolism, sloths can starve to death even with a full belly.
What we do know is, the moths benefit when the sloths leave their trees to poop. The more moths that make the sloth fur their home, the more the algae can grow, and the greener the sloth fur becomes.
Brown-throated sloths inhabit the high canopy of the forest, where they eat young leaves from a wide range of different trees (primarily in the genus Cecropia), as well as flowers and fruits. [13] They do not travel far, with home ranges of only around 0.5 to 9 ha (1.2 to 22.2 acres), depending on the local environment.
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Pale-throated sloths are solitary, [8] herbivorous animals that spend almost their entire lives in trees. Depending on habitat, population densities of anything from 1.7 to 221 per square kilometre (4.4 to 572.4/sq mi) have been reported. [2] They eat only leaves, twigs, and buds of the trees of Cecropia, Ceiba, Elizabetha, and Hevea. [9]