🦥 Sloth Life
The Sloth Is an Ecosystem: Algae, Moths and a Fur Coat That Grows Backwards
Sloth fur has grooves, the grooves hold water, the water grows algae, and the algae feed moths that live nowhere else.
Two obsessions,
one journal.
Dragonflies solved flight, vision and interception before the dinosaurs. Sloths solved the energy budget of eating leaves. This blog is field notes, species profiles and long looks at both.
10posts
12species profiled
5with wings
5with claws
Featured
🍃 The Slow Lane
The Sloth's Secret Is Not Laziness, It Is Arithmetic
A sloth is not a failed fast animal. It is a very successful solution to a hard budgeting problem: leaves are terrible food.
💠 Dragonfly Field Notes
Four Wings, Independently Controlled: How a Dragonfly Actually Flies
Each of a dragonfly's four wings has its own muscles, its own timing, and its own opinion. That is the whole trick.
💠 Dragonflies
-
Blue Dasher
Pachydiplax longipennis
30.0 km/h top speed
-
Common Green Darner
Anax junius
56.0 km/h top speed
-
Emperor Dragonfly
Anax imperator
50.0 km/h top speed
-
Golden-ringed Dragonfly
Cordulegaster boltonii
40.0 km/h top speed
🦥 Sloths
- Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth Bradypus variegatus 15.0 h asleep a day · Least Concern
- Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth Choloepus hoffmanni 14.0 h asleep a day · Least Concern
- Linnaeus's Two-toed Sloth Choloepus didactylus 13.0 h asleep a day · Least Concern
- Maned Three-toed Sloth Bradypus torquatus 15.5 h asleep a day · Vulnerable
Latest
🍃 The Slow Lane
Reading at Sloth Pace: In Defence of Doing One Thing Slowly
Every post here carries two reading times: yours, and the sloth estimate. The second one is the honest one.
🌍 Conservation
One Island, One Sloth, Fewer Than a Hundred Left
The pygmy three-toed sloth lives on one small Panamanian island, in a fringe of mangroves, and nowhere else on Earth.
💠 Dragonfly Field Notes
Field Notes: A Pond in June, Hour by Hour
Nothing rare, nothing dramatic. Just a small pond, one warm day, and everything that happened over it.
🌊 Wings & Water
The Insect That Crosses an Ocean Without Any Individual Making the Trip
Pantala flavescens rides the monsoon between India and Africa in generational relays. No single glider sees both shores.
🦥 Sloth Life
Why a Sloth Swims Three Times Faster Than It Walks
On the ground a sloth is a rumour of movement. In water it is genuinely competent.
💠 Dragonfly Field Notes
Compound Eyes With 30,000 Facets, and Almost No Blind Spot
A dragonfly's head is mostly eye, and its eye is mostly a targeting computer.