A sloth is a tailless arboreal mammal found in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America. The three-toed sloth (genus Bradypus), with three-toed front feet and five-toed hind feet, has a dense gray-brown furry coat. This sloth is about the size of a house cat. Clinging to branches with powerful curved claws, sloths eat, sleep, and travel upside-down. Despite the fact that they are very slow moving, they can strike quite swiftly if attacked.

I type
Writing, talking, searching
living my life for only me
while my mother washes dishes

Thursday
Air fresheners shaped like trees hang like a sad chandelier. Another desolate residence. Number 306. The hallway's plaster falls in chunks. No would should have to live like this, but many of us do. We sit in our boxes, afraid to go out, afraid to try and fail. Is the word sloth written above our headboards as we sleep, only we can't yet see it?

(Somerset)Our killer seems to have more purpose.
It's impressive to see a man feeding off his emotions.
(Somerset, at the hospital)Is there any chance he might survive?
(Doctor) Detective, he'd die of shock right now if you were to shine a flashlight in his eyes. He's experienced about as much pain and suffering as anyone I've encountered, give or take. And he still has hell to look forward to.

(Somerset, later on in the office) Imagine the will it takes to keep a man bound for a full year. To sever his hand and use it to plant fingerprints. To insert tubes into his genitals.

So often we want to run away. It's natural, or so we've been taught, to freeze up in fear, to give up because it's easier. We are all guilty of sloth somewhere down the line; it's merely how long that line goes and whether or not we are found alive at the end of it.

Go back to:
Pride
Avarice
Envy
Wrath
Lust
Gluttony

"Hey can you help me out, my shoe is slothed."

Besides being a mammal and a sin, Sloth is also one of the most memorable characters from classic family film The Goonies. His full name is actually Lotney Fratelli. His evil mother and two bumbling brothers lock him in the basement because of his deformed face (one eye is a lot lower then the other and he's missing plenty of teeth). He can speak, but only slowly and in a the type of voice cartoon monkeys tend to have. He always wears his favorite Superman shirt bearing the classic red white and yellow S-logo. He is eventually rescued by Chunk just in time to save the rest of the Goonies and get his come-uppance on the rest of his family. Sloth was played by John Matuszak.

Dictionary.com says that sloth is also the name given to a company of bears.

There is also a sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), found in Sri Lanka.

As earlier write-ups point out, a sloth typically spends almost all its time hanging upside-down in trees and spends 18-20 hours of each day "resting", (in the acting sense), or sleeping. When sloths do move around, it's at an excrutiating pace of about 6 feet per minute. Most of a sloth's "activity" goes on at night when it might move around in the tree tops. Sloth's even mate whilst hanging upside-down in the trees, since a journey down to the ground would waste precious energy.

The sloth is so conditioned to hanging in trees that the fur on its belly points the 'wrong' way so that rain can run off more easily. During the rainy season, its fur takes on a green-ish tinge due to algae which grows in its grooved hair.

In addition to algae, the slow-moving sloth often plays host to a great variety of insects - beetles, ticks, mites and even moths often live in the sloth's fur.

A sloth's infrequent trips to the ground are centred around foraging for food on the forest floor and a bi-weekly visit to the bathroom. This hour-long activity involves the sloth digging a hole with its tail before depositing its dung pellets and burying them. With all that activity, no wonder the sloth takes two weeks to rest between toilet breaks. During such an occurence, the moths living in the sloth's fetid fur take the opportunity to disembark and lay eggs in the freshly-layed faeces. Charming.

Given the huge amount of energy expended in descending from the tree-tops, spending an hour digging a hole and defecating before climbing back up again, many people have questioned why the sloth goes to such elaborate lengths. The answer, in my opinion, lies in the fact the sloth hangs upside-down in the trees.

Sloth (?), n. [OE. slouthe, sleuthe, AS. slw, fr. slaw slow. See Slow.]

1.

Slowness; tardiness.

These cardinals trifle with me; I abhor This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome. Shak.

2.

Disinclination to action or labor; sluggishness; laziness; idleness.

[They] change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth. Milton.

Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears. Franklin.

3. Zool.

Any one of several species of arboreal edentates constituting the family Bradypodidae, and the suborder Tardigrada. They have long exserted limbs and long prehensile claws. Both jaws are furnished with teeth (see Illust. of Edentata), and the ears and tail are rudimentary. They inhabit South and Central America and Mexico.

The three-toed sloths belong to the genera Bradypus and Arctopithecus, of which several species have been described. They have three toes on each foot. The best-known species are collared sloth (Bradypus tridactylus), and the ai (Arctopitheus ai). The two-toed sloths, consisting the genus Cholopus, have two toes on each fore foot and three on each hind foot. The best-known is the unau (Cholopus didactylus) of South America. See Unau. Another species (C. Hoffmanni) inhabits Central America. Various large extinct terrestrial edentates, such as Megatherium and Mylodon, are often called sloths.

Australian, or Native sloth Zool., the koala. -- Sloth animalcule Zool., a tardigrade. -- Sloth bear Zool., a black or brown long-haired bear (Melursus ursinus, or labiatus), native of India and Ceylon; -- called also aswail, labiated bear, and jungle bear. It is easily tamed and can be taught many tricks. -- Sloth monkey Zool., a loris.

© Webster 1913.

Sloth, v. i.

To be idle.

Gower.

© Webster 1913.