Two Sloths, 31 Million Years Apart, Both Descended From Giants

💰 Support the channel: USDT TRC20: TBebXWjFeAJHfArVsJvt8N6Yv5rvn4GXP7 Two sloths can hang from the same branch, look like twins and still not be the same animal. The two-fingered and three-fingered sloths split about 31 million years ago, and genetic and protein studies published in 2019 showed that each one is the last survivor of a different family of ground-dwelling giants: the three-fingered sloth belongs with Megatherium, a 4-ton giant, and with the ground sloth Thomas Jefferson first mistook for a lion; the two-fingered sloth belongs with Mylodon, whose skin and hair were found in a cave in Chile in 1895. This video shows how to tell the two apart at a glance, why every sloth actually has three toes, why a leaf diet forces an animal into this exact slow, upside-down shape, and how the three-fingered sloth ended up with the lowest energy use ever measured in a wild mammal that is not hibernating. It covers the organs tied to the ribs so a sloth can breathe upside down, the algae that grows only in sloth fur, the fungi in that fur that were tested against malaria and cancer cells, and a sloth that grazed underwater off the coast of Peru. Then the weekly trip down to the forest floor, the most famous explanation for it, and the 2021 paper that challenges that explanation. Plus the pygmy three-toed sloth, which lives on a single island off Panama and nowhere else. 👍 Subscribe for a new wildlife documentary every week. #sloth #sloths #twotoedsloth #threetoedsloth #wildlife #wildlifedocumentary #animalfacts #naturedocumentary #groundsloth #megatherium #rainforest #costarica #evolution #harpyeagle #natureeducation