Goffart, M. (1971). "Function and Form in the sloth". International Series of Monographs in Pure and Applied Biology. 34: 94–95. BBC (4 November 2016), Swimming sloth - Planet Earth II: Islands Preview - BBC One, archived from the original on 30 October 2021 , retrieved 17 April 2017 Svartman, Marta; Stone, Gary; Stanyon, Roscoe (21 July 2006). "The Ancestral Eutherian Karyotype Is Present in Xenarthra". PLOS Genetics. 2 (7): e109. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.0020109. ISSN 1553-7404. PMC 1513266. PMID 16848642. {{ cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI ( link) We want to make your return as easy as possible, that’s why you can now return using InPost or Royal Mail. Gilman’s ‘criticism’ of our ‘basic’ approach is perhaps a compliment. It is a popular, entertaining, sometimes provocative, approach to the subject of obesity, covering aspects of the history of obesity through medicine, literature and art.

Gaudin, Timothy (2004). "Phylogenetic Relationships among Sloths (Mammalia, Xenarthra, Tardigrada): The Craniodental Evidence". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 140 (2): 255–305. doi: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.2003.00100.x.Montgomery, Sy. "Community Ecology of the Sloth". Cecropia: Supplemental Information. Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 24 May 2009 . Retrieved 6 September 2009. a b Gardner, A. (2005). Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M. (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rded.). Johns Hopkins University Press. pp.100–101. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494. Two-toed sloths are omnivorous, with a diverse diet of insects, carrion, fruits, leaves and small lizards, ranging over up to 140 hectares (350 acres). Three-toed sloths, on the other hand, are almost entirely herbivorous (plant eaters), with a limited diet of leaves from only a few trees, [39] and no other mammal digests its food as slowly.

Moreno, Ricardo S.; Kays, Roland W.; Samudio, Rafael (24 August 2006). "Competitive Release in Diets of Ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) and Puma (Puma concolor) after Jaguar (Panthera onca) Decline". Journal of Mammalogy. 87 (4): 808–816. doi: 10.1644/05-MAMM-A-360R2.1. ISSN 0022-2372. Megatherium americanum ( Megatheriidae, London) Evolution Nothrotheriops shastensis ( Nothrotheriidae, La Brea) a b "Overview". The Sloth Conservation Foundation. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017 . Retrieved 29 November 2017. The 'Busy' Life of the Sloth | BBC Earth". YouTube. 18 May 2009. Archived from the original on 16 February 2021 . Retrieved 11 February 2022.Sloth". National Geographic. March 2014. Archived from the original on 11 April 2019 . Retrieved 1 December 2017. Sloths arose in South America during a long period of isolation and eventually spread to a number of the Caribbean islands as well as North America. It is thought that swimming led to oceanic dispersal of pilosans to the Greater Antilles by the Oligocene, and that the megalonychid Pliometanastes and the mylodontid Thinobadistes were able to colonise North America about 9 million years ago, well before the formation of the Isthmus of Panama. The latter development, about 3 million years ago, allowed megatheriids and nothrotheriids to also invade North America as part of the Great American Interchange. Additionally, the nothrotheriid Thalassocnus of the west coast of South America became adapted to a semiaquatic and, eventually, perhaps fully aquatic marine lifestyle. [14] In Peru and Chile, Thalassocnus entered the coastal habitat beginning in the late Miocene. Initially they just stood in the water, but over a span of 4 million years they eventually evolved into swimming creatures, becoming specialist bottom feeders of seagrasses, similar to extant marine sirenians. [15] Bailey, T. N. (1974). Social organization in a bobcat population. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 38(3),435-446. Sloths have an uncommonly slow metabolism. When a sloth eats, the time its body takes to convert that food source into energy is far longer than the average mammal of its size. Because of this and their low-calorie diet of leaves, sloths are always low on energy, so they need to be conservative in how they use it. They move slowly, stay within a small home range, and only relieve themselves once a week.

Sloths are unusual among mammals in not having seven cervical vertebrae. Two-toed sloths have five to seven, while three-toed sloths have eight or nine. The other mammals not having seven are the manatees, with six. [23] Physiology Nothrotheriidae: ground sloths that lived from approximately 11.6 million to 11,000 years ago. As well as ground sloths, this family included Thalassocnus, a genus of either semiaquatic or fully aquatic sloths. Steadman, D. W.; Martin, P. S.; MacPhee, R. D. E.; Jull, A. J. T.; McDonald, H. G.; Woods, C. A.; Iturralde-Vinent, M.; Hodgins, G. W. L. (16 August 2005). "Asynchronous extinction of late Quaternary sloths on continents and islands". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 102 (33): 11763–11768. Bibcode: 2005PNAS..10211763S. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0502777102. PMC 1187974. PMID 16085711. Sloths also have a special, symbiotic relationship with green algae for the purpose of supplementing their diet. In return, the green algae benefits from shelter and water since the sloth's fur is extremely good at absorbing and retaining water. As I noted this is a comprehensive study of BOTH ‘medical’ and ‘cultural’ representations of obesity, which makes the problem of the volume even more engaging. The notion that representations validate medical views seems very 19th century, very much enmeshed in a Rankian positivism rarely seen today in studies of medical imagery. Yet the study is sophisticated enough to engage in a rather good summary of the ideological meanings grafted onto to the constructed categories of obesity over the ages. But in its analysis of medicine remains a sphere seemingly devoid of ideology. Thus the representation of medical knowledge is one that centers on the ‘facts’ of contemporary medicine and their antecedents. That there are recent approaches to obesity that are no longer seen as ‘scientific,’ such as the psychoanalytic ones proposed by Hilde Bruch in the 1950s, is ignored. But of course in the 1950s these approaches assumed that they were the cutting-edge scientific explanation – and they were! Such claims of science as a true representation of the world, rather than a flawed or partial one, seem to be inherent to the science of obesity itself. And yet as indicated by my list above, even the medical authorities of our day seem not quite clear as to what obesity is and what its implications are. Do we assume that we are a fat collecting species? Do we assume that we are an addictive species? Is this not an inherent contradiction: if collecting fat is natural because it is preprogrammed in us genetically due to evolutionary processes how can it be pathological? How can an addiction to food be anything but natural and therefore non-addictive?Sloths: Hottest-Selling Animal in Colombia's Illegal Pet Trade". ABC News. 29 May 2013. Archived from the original on 6 July 2020 . Retrieved 2 December 2017. The main reason for a sloth’s lethargic movement is its specialised metabolism. They live off low-calorie vegetation that their bodies turn into energy at a very slow speed. Their metabolic rate is about 40-45% of the average speed expected in a mammal their size, and it can take anywhere from 157 to 1,200 hours for a sloth to metabolise and excrete a leaf it eats.