Amazin' Amazon Mystery Animals

Mystery Animal #9 - Answer: Sloth

 The sloth is an oddball in a forest full of oddities. While other animals rely on speed, agility and coloration to avoid hungry predators, sloths just hang around. They're so slow moving that both plants (fungi and algae) and animals (beetles, moths and other insects) seem to mistake them for stationary objects, taking up residence in their hairy coats. The resident plants give the otherwise gray sloth a green coating which helps, along with its nearly imperceptible movements, to make it difficult
for predators to locate amidst the verdant foliage of the canopy, which it likes to eat. Monkey-like in its arboreal habit, the sloth's closest cousins, the armadillo and anteater, spend much more of their time on the ground. While the sloth might care to pay a visit to its family on the forest floor, it would find the trip quite tumblesome: designed exclusively for hanging upside down, the sloth's legs and arms cannot handle the feat of walking.
 
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