{"id":108801,"date":"2025-08-31T01:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T01:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/108801\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T01:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T01:01:08","slug":"why-sloths-dont-burp-fart-or-throw-up-despite-hanging-upside-down-all-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/108801\/","title":{"rendered":"Why sloths don’t burp, fart or throw up \u2014 despite hanging upside down all day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apart from a weekly trip to the base of its tree for a toilet break, a sloth lives in the jungle canopy 24\/7, and for much of that time it\u2019s upside down, says Sheena Harvey. To enable it to live comfortably in this manner it has three powerful claws on each back foot and a very peculiar digestive system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thanks to the specialised tendons in its arms and legs, that lock it to a branch, the animal can hang pretty much motionless for hours, even maintaining the position when it\u2019s fast asleep. What sets it apart from other tree-dwelling mammals\u00a0that\u00a0have to\u00a0stay reasonably upright\u00a0is the odd arrangement of its food pipe and stomach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sloths<\/a>\u00a0consume\u00a0a huge number of leaves\u00a0that remain in\u00a0their\u00a0digestive systems\u00a0for up to 30 days before they are full processed. That\u2019s how long it takes the gut bacteria to break down and ferment the tough vegetation. Their\u00a0large\u00a0four-chambered\u00a0stomach therefore holds a huge volume of brewing leaf mash, so much so that it accounts for about two-thirds of the sloth\u2019s body weight.<\/p>\n

Think of\u00a0a\u00a0compartmentalised\u00a0bag full of semi-solid liquid, hanging upside down with an open\u00a0narrow pipe\u00a0leading out\u00a0at the bottom. You would automatically assume that the pressure of the contents would force the semi-digested food out of the\u00a0pipe,\u00a0ie,\u00a0the\u00a0sloth\u2019s mouth. But it doesn\u2019t\u00a0happen.<\/p>\n

The reason is\u00a0that\u00a0the sloth\u2019s\u00a0oesophagus doesn\u2019t stretch in a straight line from its\u00a0stomach\u00a0to its\u00a0mouth\u00a0as it does in most animals, it loops round, like the U-bend in a toilet.\u00a0If you\u2019re spending 30 days digesting your\u00a0meals\u00a0you don\u2019t want to accidentally lose all that nutrition just because gravity has taken over.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, sloths are prone to falling out of trees, especially in disputes with other sloths where the primary objective seems to be to knock their opponent off their perch. They don\u2019t seem to hurt themselves in these falls, and they don\u2019t lose their lunch,\u00a0as might happen with\u00a0a heavy\u00a0blow and a straight path from stomach to mouth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The downside to\u00a0having a physiology that prevents\u00a0a\u00a0vomiting episode\u00a0is that\u00a0sloths\u00a0also can\u2019t burp.\u00a0With the rate of their\u00a0food processing being slow and continuous,\u00a0they\u00a0don\u2019t get to fart much either. So excess air ingested with the leaves,\u00a0and gas formed by the fermentation process, are absorbed into\u00a0their bloodstream and expelled through their skin or when they breathe out.<\/p>\n

There is, however, an\u00a0added advantage of this\u00a0complicated digestion process.\u00a0When sloths come down from their lofty upside-down world for a swim, which they very much enjoy, they have a lot of natural buoyancy, thanks to all that trapped gas. It can only be imagined that the looped oesophagus helps with the effects of any nausea from bobbing\u00a0up and down\u00a0in the river, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apart from a weekly trip to the base of its tree for a toilet break, a sloth lives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-108801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}