Saturday, May 17, 2008

Sloth's lazy image 'a myth'


The sloth's popular image as a lazy creature that sleeps for most of the day has been called into question.


Rather than snoozing for more than 16 hours a day, as observed in captivity, sloths in the wild doze for less than 10 hours, research suggests.

Scientists caught sloths living in the rainforest of Panama and fitted them with a device that monitors sleep.

The findings, published in a Royal Society journal, may help shed light on human sleep disorders, they say.

Lead researcher Niels Rattenborg, of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, said the study demonstrated for the first time that it was possible to record sleep in a wild animal. -bbc

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