thephotosocietyのインスタグラム(thephotosociety) - 11月8日 09時08分

Three-toed Sloth nourishing a tree, Costa Rica – Photo by Kevin Schafer @schaferpho @ナショナルジオグラフィック. Sometimes witnessing a rare – or particularly bizarre -- natural event can cloud a person’s judgment. How else can I justify my irrational excitement at stumbling onto a wild three-toed sloth going to the toilet? Let me explain. Sloths are residents of the rain forest canopy, where they while away their slow-paced lives feeding on an endless banquet of leaves. Leaves, however, are not the most nutritious of foods, providing limited energy, which helps explain why sloths are never in much of a hurry to get anywhere. Still, they are splendidly adapted to life in the treetops, their unique toes designed to serve as efficient clamps with which they can hold on to even the tiniest branch. Sloths are so happy in the trees, in fact, that there is essentially no reason for them to ever come to the ground. After all, their slow-moving habits and lack of teeth or sharp claws, make them extraordinarily vulnerable to earth-bound predators. Nonetheless, roughly once a week sloths invariably descend from the protection of the trees, dig a tidy hole, defecate, and then promptly climb back up again. Scientists who have observed this behavior are almost universally baffled: why on earth would a strictly arboreal animal, essentially helpless on the ground, make the effort -- or take the risk? (Why not simply lean out over a convenient branch and let fly?) I wish I could tell you, but to this day no one has proposed a compelling explanation. Some have suggested that the loyal sloth is merely helping to nourish its favorite tree, while others propose that sloths are simply fastidious. Whatever the reason, all scientists agree that the behavior is clearly important to the sloth in some fashion: we simply don’t yet understand how. No, I did not take this picture for its brilliant light, stunning composition, or any potential commercial value. Instead, I was drawn solely by the rarity of the moment, and a behavior I had never witnessed before. That was enough for me. #sloth #bathroom #behavior #privacy #CostaRica

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