Rainforest Animals - Two-Toed Sloth

Two-Toed Sloth: Choloepus hoffmanni - Central & South America

There are two species of two-toed sloth in S. America - Hoffman's (or Unau) found in the forested regions of northern S. America from Ecuador to Costa Rica, and Linnaeus (Choloepus didattylus) in Brazil.

Sloths are slow-moving, tree-dwelling animals that spend almost the whole of their lives hanging upside down from the branches of trees where the growth of algae on their hair provides the excellent greenish camouflage that makes them so difficult to spot.

When they are on the ground - perhaps due to a branch breaking - sloths can only move with difficulty.

They eat leaves and fruit. In addition to the two-toed sloths there are three species of three-toed sloth found in the rain forests of South America