The
sloth is not so much an animal as a walking ecosystem. This tightly
fitting assemblage consists of a) the sloth, b) a species of moth that
lives nowhere but in the sloth’s fleece and c) a dedicated species of
algae that grows in special channels in the sloth’s grooved hairs. Groom
a three-toed sloth and more than a hundred moths may fly out. When the
sloth grooms itself, its fingersmove so slowly that the moths have no
difficulty keeping ahead of them.
The
probable interplay of these three components has now been worked out by
a team of biologists led by Jonathan N. Pauli and M. Zachariah Peery at
the University of Wisconsin. Their first step was to ponder a 35-year-old mystery about the behavior of the sloth.
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