“A sloth’s stomach can make up to ONE-THIRD of its body weight-more than double that of other animals its size.””A sloth’s stomach can make up to ONE-THIRD of its body weight-more than double that of other animals its size.”

National Geographic Kids, 5,000 Awesome Facts, sloth #8

An adult sloth weighs between 5.5 pounds to about 17 -18 pounds, which is about the same weight as a small human baby at 5.5 and a large Canadian Goose at 17-18 lbs. That would mean their stomach would weigh about 1.5 lbs to about 6 lbs.

An adult human at 150 lbs would have about a 45 lb stomach. That is a lot of gut. A 200 lb human would have about 60 lbs of gut.

Their stomach is made up of four different chambers, just like cows, all for the different levels of digestion the sloth has to go through when breaking down the leaves with bacteria in its gut. It takes a sloth roughly 1 month to fully digest a meal of a leaf and so they are always full and their gut is always 1/3 their size.

A baby sloth weighs about 400 grams at birth, or about .881 lb. Just imagine their little tummy takes up more than 1/3 of their weight. Awww.

emborawild.com, animalyhype.com, slothconservation.org