Not a ringing endorsement, I know, but here’s the article from Nature:
Sloths not so slothful
In the wild, sloths are no lazier than the average teenager.
The average day of the average sloth isn’t so different from yours or mine, it seems. It goes something like this: 8 a.m.: wake up; 6 p.m.: dinner; 11 p.m.: bed.
Although that schedule doesn’t sound too hectic, studies of captive sloths had suggested that the animals slept for almost 16 hours a day. But of brain activity from wild animals show that the actual figure is less than 10 hours. The finding shows that the amount that animals sleep in the lab might not reflect how much shut-eye they get in the wild. And it suggests that comparisons of the sleeping patterns of different species need to take into account many different behaviours and environmental factors.
Niels Rattenborg, of the Max Planck Institute, and his colleagues fitted three adult female brown-throated three-toed sloths (Bradypus variegatus) with ten-gram devices to record their brain’s electrical activity, along with radio tracking collars, and a device to measure their movement. The data clearly showed when the animals had been awake, asleep and possibly even when they were dreaming (REM sleep). Sloths’ total sleep time is approximately what would be expected for an animal of their size.
[More here...]
I’ll insert a funny comment here, right after my nap.
