KidZone Animals
Sloths: Sleep

"Sleeping Sloth" by Chris McInnis;
used with permission under CC BY 2.0

Although sloths get a really bad rap for being lazy animals, the truth is that, in the wild, sloths will only sleep about 9 hours a night--about the same as the average human.

Sloths love to sleep hanging upside down. This is made possible by the specialized hooked claws sloths have. You would be hard-pressed to find a sloth sleeping near the ground because they are much more vulnerable to their predators if they are caught napping on the ground! They really do make the most of their situation.