Life History
In the wild, there are about 11 times more female two-toed sloths than male two-toed sloths.
Courtship consists of the female licking the male's face and rubbing their genitals against the male's body. Gestation lasts between 355 and 377 days, and results in the birth of a single young. Newborn sloths weigh 340 to 454 grams (12 to 16.0 oz), and are precocial, already possessing long claws and able to cling to the mother's underside. They begin to take solid food at 15 to 27 days, and are fully weaned by nine weeks. Although relatively quiet as adults, young sloths make loud bleating alarm calls if separated from their mother.
Hoffmann's two-toed sloths reach sexual maturity at two to four years of age and have been reported to live up to 32 years in captivity.
Read more about this topic: Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or history:
“Like children, the elders are a burden. But unlike children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.”
—Kent Nerburn (20th century)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)