Diet
Though two-toed sloths also eat fruits and flowers, most of their diet consists of tree leaves. They use their lips to tear off their food and chew with their peg-like teeth which have no enamel and are always growing. Although they are not true ruminants, sloths have a three-chambered stomach. The first two chambers hold symbiotic bacteria to help them digest the cellulose in their fibre-rich diet, while only the third chamber contains digestive glands typical of the stomachs of most other mammals. It may take a sloth up to a month to completely digest a meal, and up to two thirds of a sloth's weight may be due to the leaves in its digestive system.
Read more about this topic: Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth
Famous quotes containing the word diet:
“I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls.
I’m on a diet from death.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
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—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)