Brown-throated Sloth

A river flows at exactly the pace dictated by gravity. From plunging mountain cascades to the languid, almost imperceptible current of the Everglades, water moves downhill no slower—but no faster—than it must. Likewise, living organisms move precisely at the pace of metabolism. The hummingbird races about at whitewater tempo, while the sloth moves more like Florida’s river of grass, just as their respective metabolisms require. Like the Everglades, sloths are as much an ecosystem as an organism. The gray and brown color of the three-toed sloth is tinged green with a unique algae that thrives only in the unusual grooves and ridges of their coarse fur. That algae, in turn, feeds a species of moth that also exists only in the sloth’s fur. The sloth becomes a nexus, slowly taking in nutrients from the leaves of the cecropia and other preferred trees, passing them through its body, sustaining itself while also casting new and different life back into the world, a living channel of transformation inhabiting Panama’s rainforest, alongside the man-made one passing through it.