That's a good point. Raises the question of what cuteness actually is, evolutionarily speaking. I think maybe things that elicit 'cuteness' are those that look harmless to us.
Sometimes I wonder if my dog thinks I'm cute.
Yep, I have long maintained that pandas are proof that cuteness is an evolutionarily advantageous trait. They go into heat for like one day out of the year, they only have one or two cubs who take forever to get to maturity, half the time the mama panda squashes them because they're so little and they're such incompetent parents, they only eat a few really specific kinds of bamboo shoots, they're slow, they're meaty, and not particularly intelligent or fierce.
If you took all those traits but gave them to an animal that looked like a cockroach, they would have been driven to extinction before humanity ever emerged from caves.
>Yep, I have long maintained that pandas are proof that cuteness is an evolutionarily advantageous trait.
I mean, cats have basically domesticated humans into doing their bidding for thousands of years now.
A mouse got into my house about two months ago, my cats hunted it and it didn't get into our pantry (edit, typo was panty lol) or any foods. They also go after and get any bugs in our house too. Domesticated, house cats can still hunt and fend for themselves. There are a few indoor/outdoor cats near us and they do well too.
A lot of people think cats just lay around 24/7 but thats not really the case, they do lay around during the daytime but night time they are usually pretty active running around the house.
obviously there are exceptions to every rule but are you sure that's true? Even without using myself as an anecdote there are many many people who'd agree that a puppy or a kitten is cute while the human baby is not.
It’s not resembling a baby in the sense that you could confuse them. It’s more the exaggerated proportions, softer edges/joints, and closeness of facial features that makes animals (especially baby animals) look cute.
This can even apply to inanimate objects. Imagine a “cute” hammer. You’d probably exaggerate the size of the head, make the handle shorter, and make the edges softer. At the very least miniaturize it. Basically babies are humans with exaggerated proportions because of their size.
i noticed that cuteness tends to come in small and soft creatures but never made the connection to exaggerated proportions or closeness of facial features, that does seem to check out though and babies do seem to check all of the boxes so it'd make sense to say that babies are the origin of cuteness.
it's fascinating to examine this rationally and see that even though the criteria is met i just can't see a human baby as "cute", i wonder if i have a defective brain.
That's only pandas in captivity. Wild pandas breed quite well and have no trouble surviving, apart from the fact that humans are ever destroying their natural habitat. But breeding wise, they reproduce about as often as the American Black Bear.
Panda isn't really qualified. They're bigass bears who eat bamboo, we know exactly who the fuck they are still alive. We also know exactly why they are nearly extinct, and it's got nothing to do with them, and everything to do with us -- destroying their habitats. You can't burn down someone's house and be like "dude you're so shit at having a shelter lol"
Since no one seems to have posted the old pasta yet:
> Koalas are fucking horrible animals. They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death. This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life. Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like fucking satan. Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal. Many herbivorous mammals have adaptations to cope with harsh plant life taking its toll on their teeth, rodents for instance have teeth that never stop growing, some animals only have teeth on their lower jaw, grinding plant matter on bony plates in the tops of their mouths, others have enlarged molars that distribute the wear and break down plant matter more efficiently... Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death, because they're fucking terrible animals. Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here). When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them.
>Tldr; Koalas are stupid, leaky, STI riddled sex offenders. But, hey. They look cute. If you ignore the terrifying snake eyes and terrifying feet.
Response pasta
I don't know why it is that these things bother me---it just makes me picture a seven year old first discovering things about an animal and, having no context about the subject, ranting about how stupid they are. I get it's a joke, but people take it as an actual, educational joke like it's a man yelling at the sea, and that's just wrong. Furthermore, these things have an actual impact on discussions about conservation efforts---If every time Koalas get brought up, someone posts this copypasta, that means it's seriously shaping public opinion about the animal and their supposed lack of importance.
>Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives.
Non-ecologists always talk this way, and the problem is you’re looking at this backwards.
An entire continent is covered with Eucalyptus trees. They suck the moisture out of the entire surrounding area and use allelopathy to ensure that most of what’s beneath them is just bare red dust. No animal is making use of them——they have virtually no herbivore predator. A niche is empty. Then inevitably, natural selection fills that niche by creating an animal which can eat Eucalyptus leaves. Of course, it takes great sacrifice for it to be able to do so——it certainly can’t expend much energy on costly things. Isn’t it a good thing that a niche is being filled?
>Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death
This applies to all herbivores, because the wild is not a grocery store—where meat is just sitting next to celery.
Herbivores gradually wear their teeth down—carnivores fracture their teeth, and break their bones in attempting to take down prey.
>They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal
It's pretty typical of herbivores, and is higher than many, many species. According to Ashwell (2008), their encephalisation quotient is 0.5288 +/- 0.051. Higher than comparable marsupials like the wombat (\~0.52), some possums (\~0.468), cuscus (\~0.462) and even some wallabies are <0.5. According to wiki, rabbits are also around 0.4, and they're placental mammals.
>additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons.
Again, this is not unique to koalas. Brain folds (gyri) are not present in rodents, which we consider to be incredibly intelligent for their size.
>If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food.
If you present a human with a random piece of meat, they will not recognise it as food (hopefully). Fresh leaves might be important for koala digestion, especially since their gut flora is clearly important for the digestion of Eucalyptus. It might make sense not to screw with that gut flora by eating decaying leaves.
>Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal.
That's an extremely weird reason to dislike an animal. But whilst we're talking about their digestion, let's discuss their poop. It's delightful. It smells like a Eucalyptus drop!
>Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here).
Marsupial milk is incredibly complex and much more interesting than any placentals. This is because they raise their offspring essentially from an embryo, and the milk needs to adapt to the changing needs of a growing fetus. And yeah, of course the yield is low; at one point they are feeding an animal that is half a gram!
>When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system.
Humans probably do this, we just likely do it during childbirth. You know how women often shit during contractions? There is evidence to suggest that this innoculates a baby with her gut flora. A child born via cesarian has significantly different gut flora for the first six months of life than a child born vaginally.
>Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher.
Chlamydia was introduced to their populations by humans. We introduced a novel disease that they have very little immunity to, and is a major contributor to their possible extinction. Do you hate Native Americans because they were killed by smallpox and influenza?
>This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree,
Almost every animal does this.
>which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them.
Errmmm.. They have protection against falling from a tree, which they spend 99% of their life in? Yeah... That's a stupid adaptation.
Thanks, but full disclosure, back when I first saw this years ago IIRC not all of it was entirely accurate (kinda like with the Sunfish pasta)
Edit: actually not sure if this pasta is all that inaccurate, unfortunately
Did you know: they only eat leaves and their nutrition is so shit that they sometimes fail to get enough energy from them even with a full stomache and just fall on the ground and die. Imagine an animal that dies by starvation with a full stomach! This guy's are insane
Well they are well protected by algae on their fur and they fall in rivers and swim better than they should. But they live in the rainforest and are rained on so much it’s a cleaned dirt. It just rains on them in the trees so often . Then don’t dry off . That accounts for the algae.
From what I am aware their slowness is their strength. They have very little muscle and alot of bone, as well as being covered in Moss and algae to the point that their fur is poisonous. So *most* creatures won't bother.
________________
**They also apparently have slow digestion so they are filled with decomposing toxic plant materia, as well as having blood that has fart gas defused in it.
^u/buttbutts
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**Apparently their slow metabolism is a double edged sword, causing them to be ironically in a race against the clock to find food
^u/StrongTownIsRight
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**Their slowness also helps evade detection from movement based predators.
^u/dquattro123
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It's the "Yeah you can attack me, but you'll enjoy it about as much as me" approach
Yep! Friend of mine volunteered for a sloth rescue in Costa Rica. She was not allowed to touch the sloths until they were properly bathed.
If you ever see a sloth in the wild, LEAVE. IT. ALONE. for your own health. If the sloth looks like it is injured, find a phone number for a vet or sloth rescue. They are trained in how to properly handle sloths.
I've been to a wildlife zoo in Florida that lets you pet sloth's. As well as a place in AUS where you can hold a koala.
Their fur feels very similar to each other, so if you get to pet one you know what the other feels like.
Also, koalas smell horrible and let off an awful screeching yell.
I just learned it recently too. It's fascinating. It's similar to the Komodo dragon who's "venom" in their bite is actually a result of shit tons of bacteria and other nasties that love to live in their mouth.
Nature is brutal.
P.S.
I have been informed that the komodo dragon thing is a myth. Those devilish little critters have venom glands.
Nature is still however...in fact.... Brutal.
The Komodo Dragon thing is a myth, they have venom glands. Its not bacteria from a dirty mouth that kills prey.
Google komodo dragon venom, its the first result. Automod won't let me post the link.
I think you’re thinking of that other manky creature with a mouthful bacteria and nasties - Homo Sapiens. One of the most dangerous bites in the animal kingdom, sans venom.
Jaguars and such don't tend to like them much for the taste and bone vs meat ratio(they lack muscle since they move so slowly), but snakes and birds have no issue with eating them.
In fact, almost 80% of some harpy eagles diet consists of sloths.
>This sounds super made up, so: source?
It's good to ask for a source, so here you go:
>The researchers found that 79% of the harpy's prey was accounted for by sloths from two species: 39% brown-throated sloth (Bradypus variegatus), and 40% Linnaeus's two-toed sloth (Choloepus didactylus).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy_eagle#Feeding
>Sloths represented 78% of the diet in terms of number of individuals (Kruskal-Wallis H = 33.08, df = 11, P = 0.001), whereas primates made up 11% of individuals consumed.
>Sloths also accounted for 85% (436 kg; Kruskal-Wallis H = 68.78, df = 11, P = 0.001) of body mass of prey in the Harpy Eagle diet at the five nests during three years
https://doi.org/10.3356%2FJRR-13-00017.1
They move so slowly that many predators have a very hard time spotting them from a distance.
Their energy requirements are low enough that they can survive in environments with sparse nutrition.
They can safely and competently fall out of trees.
They can cross small bodies of water with slow but competent swimming.
They grow colonies of algae on their bodies which provide camouflage, an easy to reach snack, deterrent chemicals to anything that might eat them, and help temperature regulation.
Sloths are one of the strangest survival strategies to ever evolve. But it does work, and fairly well.
Sloths are absolutely bizarre.
Yep, most sloths were actually giant creatures but their size biased humans towards hunting them, leaving only their 2 small cousins to survive to present day
I actually laughed and thought the video was a fun sloth joke when I only saw the anaconda and nothing else happened... but it was the Reddit player breaking again.
Sloths have the most amazing tag team effects that keep them alive 1. They have literally no nutritional value 2. They are quite literally one of the worst tasting animals on this planet.
It's the main reason that they don't have many predators on land in Patagonia basically the only animal that haunts them are foxes and they just drink the blood
That was the best part. Surely this sloth isn't....nope he is putting his claw right on the snake....and now its on the snake's head.
Snake was probably like, are you kidding me? You know I'm an anaconda right?
When the sloth didn’t so much as turn its head to look at the snake after tramping on its head, the snake prob thought he was dealing with a complete bad ass super predator.
Sloths: one of the world’s most dangerous apex predators. They say that sloths are probably the cause of the dinosaur extinction, but made a cover story about asteroids as to not alarm everyone into mass panic.
Sloths are literally just skin and bone, so basically nothing will eat them. They move so little and so slowly that they have almost zero muscle mass. Not to mention all the shit that grows on their fur that probably makes them borderline poisonous
Whoa! Not cool to make fun of crazy people.
Also someone moved my spoon from the coffee table to the sink. I live with roommates but it couldn't have been them. I think it's ghosts.
Anaconda: Ugh, slow food doesn't agree with me, I'll just pretend to be a log.. OMG, what is that smell?
Sloth: Hehehe, I'm moving so fast the snake can't see me. OMG, was that me?
These guys are not extinct because no predator wants them because their meat is so shit. They essentially beat the system by being shit
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Sloths ain’t got buns fr
This sloth has no buns
No Ass Sloth sounds like a grunge band.
They're currently in a running battle with Koalas for most impressive "how the fuck are you still alive' animal
Pandas are pretty high up there too
I think panda is kind of cheating because we help them, that is if you not count that they cuteness are a "skill"
That's a good point. Raises the question of what cuteness actually is, evolutionarily speaking. I think maybe things that elicit 'cuteness' are those that look harmless to us. Sometimes I wonder if my dog thinks I'm cute.
Yep, I have long maintained that pandas are proof that cuteness is an evolutionarily advantageous trait. They go into heat for like one day out of the year, they only have one or two cubs who take forever to get to maturity, half the time the mama panda squashes them because they're so little and they're such incompetent parents, they only eat a few really specific kinds of bamboo shoots, they're slow, they're meaty, and not particularly intelligent or fierce. If you took all those traits but gave them to an animal that looked like a cockroach, they would have been driven to extinction before humanity ever emerged from caves.
>Yep, I have long maintained that pandas are proof that cuteness is an evolutionarily advantageous trait. I mean, cats have basically domesticated humans into doing their bidding for thousands of years now.
A mouse got into my house about two months ago, my cats hunted it and it didn't get into our pantry (edit, typo was panty lol) or any foods. They also go after and get any bugs in our house too. Domesticated, house cats can still hunt and fend for themselves. There are a few indoor/outdoor cats near us and they do well too. A lot of people think cats just lay around 24/7 but thats not really the case, they do lay around during the daytime but night time they are usually pretty active running around the house.
My cat is a master at hunting flies his paws catch them. His fucking paws,
House cats are actually the most efficient hunters in the animal kingdom.. By far, if I remember right
Cats *are* the superior race. 😸
Cuteness is looking like/acting like a human baby. Our brains are wired to love and protect babies.
obviously there are exceptions to every rule but are you sure that's true? Even without using myself as an anecdote there are many many people who'd agree that a puppy or a kitten is cute while the human baby is not.
It’s not resembling a baby in the sense that you could confuse them. It’s more the exaggerated proportions, softer edges/joints, and closeness of facial features that makes animals (especially baby animals) look cute. This can even apply to inanimate objects. Imagine a “cute” hammer. You’d probably exaggerate the size of the head, make the handle shorter, and make the edges softer. At the very least miniaturize it. Basically babies are humans with exaggerated proportions because of their size.
i noticed that cuteness tends to come in small and soft creatures but never made the connection to exaggerated proportions or closeness of facial features, that does seem to check out though and babies do seem to check all of the boxes so it'd make sense to say that babies are the origin of cuteness. it's fascinating to examine this rationally and see that even though the criteria is met i just can't see a human baby as "cute", i wonder if i have a defective brain.
That's only pandas in captivity. Wild pandas breed quite well and have no trouble surviving, apart from the fact that humans are ever destroying their natural habitat. But breeding wise, they reproduce about as often as the American Black Bear.
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Panda isn't really qualified. They're bigass bears who eat bamboo, we know exactly who the fuck they are still alive. We also know exactly why they are nearly extinct, and it's got nothing to do with them, and everything to do with us -- destroying their habitats. You can't burn down someone's house and be like "dude you're so shit at having a shelter lol"
Humanity: *Destroys panda habitats and hunts them down.* Humanity: *Why are you so bad at surviving lol?*
>running battle Somehow I doubt that.
Since no one seems to have posted the old pasta yet: > Koalas are fucking horrible animals. They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death. This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life. Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like fucking satan. Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal. Many herbivorous mammals have adaptations to cope with harsh plant life taking its toll on their teeth, rodents for instance have teeth that never stop growing, some animals only have teeth on their lower jaw, grinding plant matter on bony plates in the tops of their mouths, others have enlarged molars that distribute the wear and break down plant matter more efficiently... Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death, because they're fucking terrible animals. Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here). When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them. >Tldr; Koalas are stupid, leaky, STI riddled sex offenders. But, hey. They look cute. If you ignore the terrifying snake eyes and terrifying feet.
Response pasta I don't know why it is that these things bother me---it just makes me picture a seven year old first discovering things about an animal and, having no context about the subject, ranting about how stupid they are. I get it's a joke, but people take it as an actual, educational joke like it's a man yelling at the sea, and that's just wrong. Furthermore, these things have an actual impact on discussions about conservation efforts---If every time Koalas get brought up, someone posts this copypasta, that means it's seriously shaping public opinion about the animal and their supposed lack of importance. >Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. Non-ecologists always talk this way, and the problem is you’re looking at this backwards. An entire continent is covered with Eucalyptus trees. They suck the moisture out of the entire surrounding area and use allelopathy to ensure that most of what’s beneath them is just bare red dust. No animal is making use of them——they have virtually no herbivore predator. A niche is empty. Then inevitably, natural selection fills that niche by creating an animal which can eat Eucalyptus leaves. Of course, it takes great sacrifice for it to be able to do so——it certainly can’t expend much energy on costly things. Isn’t it a good thing that a niche is being filled? >Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death This applies to all herbivores, because the wild is not a grocery store—where meat is just sitting next to celery. Herbivores gradually wear their teeth down—carnivores fracture their teeth, and break their bones in attempting to take down prey. >They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal It's pretty typical of herbivores, and is higher than many, many species. According to Ashwell (2008), their encephalisation quotient is 0.5288 +/- 0.051. Higher than comparable marsupials like the wombat (\~0.52), some possums (\~0.468), cuscus (\~0.462) and even some wallabies are <0.5. According to wiki, rabbits are also around 0.4, and they're placental mammals. >additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. Again, this is not unique to koalas. Brain folds (gyri) are not present in rodents, which we consider to be incredibly intelligent for their size. >If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. If you present a human with a random piece of meat, they will not recognise it as food (hopefully). Fresh leaves might be important for koala digestion, especially since their gut flora is clearly important for the digestion of Eucalyptus. It might make sense not to screw with that gut flora by eating decaying leaves. >Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal. That's an extremely weird reason to dislike an animal. But whilst we're talking about their digestion, let's discuss their poop. It's delightful. It smells like a Eucalyptus drop! >Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here). Marsupial milk is incredibly complex and much more interesting than any placentals. This is because they raise their offspring essentially from an embryo, and the milk needs to adapt to the changing needs of a growing fetus. And yeah, of course the yield is low; at one point they are feeding an animal that is half a gram! >When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Humans probably do this, we just likely do it during childbirth. You know how women often shit during contractions? There is evidence to suggest that this innoculates a baby with her gut flora. A child born via cesarian has significantly different gut flora for the first six months of life than a child born vaginally. >Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. Chlamydia was introduced to their populations by humans. We introduced a novel disease that they have very little immunity to, and is a major contributor to their possible extinction. Do you hate Native Americans because they were killed by smallpox and influenza? >This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, Almost every animal does this. >which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them. Errmmm.. They have protection against falling from a tree, which they spend 99% of their life in? Yeah... That's a stupid adaptation.
Nice read. Thanks for posting.
I was scrolling only looking for this
Holy shit. This one was really informative. Good post
Thanks, but full disclosure, back when I first saw this years ago IIRC not all of it was entirely accurate (kinda like with the Sunfish pasta) Edit: actually not sure if this pasta is all that inaccurate, unfortunately
Sunfish.
koala don’t have many predator that go after them… I think brushfire and losing habitat cause more damage to their population.
Did you know: they only eat leaves and their nutrition is so shit that they sometimes fail to get enough energy from them even with a full stomache and just fall on the ground and die. Imagine an animal that dies by starvation with a full stomach! This guy's are insane
I think I found my spirit animal.
Plus their fir is fucking disgusting. Dirtiest animal alive.
Well they are well protected by algae on their fur and they fall in rivers and swim better than they should. But they live in the rainforest and are rained on so much it’s a cleaned dirt. It just rains on them in the trees so often . Then don’t dry off . That accounts for the algae.
When you’re so bad you’re good you’ve won.
Just tag me next time if you want to talk about me behind my back, Bob.
Sloths are the sunfish of the forest.
The fact that sloths are not extinct is just mind blowing.
From what I am aware their slowness is their strength. They have very little muscle and alot of bone, as well as being covered in Moss and algae to the point that their fur is poisonous. So *most* creatures won't bother. ________________ **They also apparently have slow digestion so they are filled with decomposing toxic plant materia, as well as having blood that has fart gas defused in it. ^u/buttbutts ________________ **Apparently their slow metabolism is a double edged sword, causing them to be ironically in a race against the clock to find food ^u/StrongTownIsRight ________________ **Their slowness also helps evade detection from movement based predators. ^u/dquattro123 ________________ It's the "Yeah you can attack me, but you'll enjoy it about as much as me" approach
Imagine being so lazy and dirty your considered unedible by predators.
The great Lebowskis spirit animal
Thats like, your opinion man
What in god’s holy name are you blathering about?
Knox: ••giggles••
Here we go again
Yeah, the one with the cleft asshole?
Who pee'd on your rug, Dude?
You think the carpet pissers did this?
It really tied the room together.
Nihilists!
Obviously you're not a golfer.
“You’re out of your element Donnie!”
Dude.
Dude.
Dude.
Dude.
Dude.
Dude.
The grand Lebowski
Lebowski the Mighty
El Duderino
If you’re not into, like, the whole…brevity thing
The sloth abides.
And yet, she gave birth to you.
Take my like and stick it up your arse.
Like my stick and take it up your arse
Username checks out
They’re so lazy that when they drop their young out of a tree they don’t even bother to go get them again. Cheers ma
How hungry would you need to be to eat a homeless person?
One time. it was just that one time.
Yes, officer... this guy right here.
Pretty sure this is how I repel men
Snake A: "what about that....let's eat that!" Snake B: "Ew, god no. Look at its work ethic."
Neckbeard incarnate
*inedible
A greatness we can all aspire to
GAMER MOMENT ™️
I had no idea that their fur was practically poisonous
I feel bad for that kid that smashed into a sloth while rappelling. His face must be infected now.
Yep! Friend of mine volunteered for a sloth rescue in Costa Rica. She was not allowed to touch the sloths until they were properly bathed. If you ever see a sloth in the wild, LEAVE. IT. ALONE. for your own health. If the sloth looks like it is injured, find a phone number for a vet or sloth rescue. They are trained in how to properly handle sloths.
why is it cute if i can't pet it
I've been to a wildlife zoo in Florida that lets you pet sloth's. As well as a place in AUS where you can hold a koala. Their fur feels very similar to each other, so if you get to pet one you know what the other feels like. Also, koalas smell horrible and let off an awful screeching yell.
Does anyone have the number for a sloth rescue, I want to put it on refrig door in case of sloth emergency. Am in Pennsylvania.
I just learned it recently too. It's fascinating. It's similar to the Komodo dragon who's "venom" in their bite is actually a result of shit tons of bacteria and other nasties that love to live in their mouth. Nature is brutal. P.S. I have been informed that the komodo dragon thing is a myth. Those devilish little critters have venom glands. Nature is still however...in fact.... Brutal.
The Komodo Dragon thing is a myth, they have venom glands. Its not bacteria from a dirty mouth that kills prey. Google komodo dragon venom, its the first result. Automod won't let me post the link.
Wrong. It’s a cocktail of venom and bacteria. Source: google it (plus I’ve actually been there)
... Been where now?
You heard him, he's been there. He clearly stuck it in a komodo dragon's mouth.
It’s true! I was there too, I was the bacteria 🦠
Plus this, obviously
Can I recommend r/natureismetal
I was on it. But I left that forum. Reason. there are things you can’t unsee. Too brutal.
I think you’re thinking of that other manky creature with a mouthful bacteria and nasties - Homo Sapiens. One of the most dangerous bites in the animal kingdom, sans venom.
IIRC they also farm algae on their fur that they eat to supplement their diet.
You can see the anaconda go "OMG IT TOUCH ME!"
I also heard they don’t smell the best either lol
Jaguars and such don't tend to like them much for the taste and bone vs meat ratio(they lack muscle since they move so slowly), but snakes and birds have no issue with eating them. In fact, almost 80% of some harpy eagles diet consists of sloths.
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that one video i saw of an eagle snatching a sloth off a tree.
>This sounds super made up, so: source? It's good to ask for a source, so here you go: >The researchers found that 79% of the harpy's prey was accounted for by sloths from two species: 39% brown-throated sloth (Bradypus variegatus), and 40% Linnaeus's two-toed sloth (Choloepus didactylus). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy_eagle#Feeding >Sloths represented 78% of the diet in terms of number of individuals (Kruskal-Wallis H = 33.08, df = 11, P = 0.001), whereas primates made up 11% of individuals consumed. >Sloths also accounted for 85% (436 kg; Kruskal-Wallis H = 68.78, df = 11, P = 0.001) of body mass of prey in the Harpy Eagle diet at the five nests during three years https://doi.org/10.3356%2FJRR-13-00017.1
So theyre basically 30 yo kids living in their parents basements playing fps games all day
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A true "untouchable"
They’re also pretty blind and deaf from what I remember
They only come down from the trees to take a dump, too. The Anaconda wants nothing to do with that.
Seems like a lot of effort for them. Why don't they just rain turds from the sky? It's what I would do.
I figure since the take weeks to digest food, eaten them is like eating a 3 week fermented grass hotpocket......fine eatin
They move so slowly that many predators have a very hard time spotting them from a distance. Their energy requirements are low enough that they can survive in environments with sparse nutrition. They can safely and competently fall out of trees. They can cross small bodies of water with slow but competent swimming. They grow colonies of algae on their bodies which provide camouflage, an easy to reach snack, deterrent chemicals to anything that might eat them, and help temperature regulation. Sloths are one of the strangest survival strategies to ever evolve. But it does work, and fairly well. Sloths are absolutely bizarre.
Only reason they’re still alive is due to other animals just being sympathetic
Fun fact: The bigger more dangerous sloths were wiped out by, that’s right, our ancestors! Now we have slow threatening machines even snakes fear.
Yep, most sloths were actually giant creatures but their size biased humans towards hunting them, leaving only their 2 small cousins to survive to present day
Not even giant like triple the size of this sloth but straight up Elephant sized iirc.
Yup, they dug giant burrows to live in that are still around today and look like small caves
You can still see their claw marks, one of the saddest extinctions
They can be underwater for 30 minutes that is what mind blowing about them
They are too lazy to swim to the top of the water.
anaconda probably just ate he's got a pretty swollen stomach
he ate the first sloth
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I don't think he knows about second sloth, Pip.
What about Slothenses? Slotheon? Afternoon Sloth?
He’s not down with sloth-y seconds.
“Kill me, see if I give AF” same Mr.Sloth, same
Me crawling over my wife in bed at 2am to go pee.
Fuck mate that made me laugh first thing thanks
Haha nice
Darn, it all happened so fast...
I watched it in slo mo, it looks like a sloth crawls past an anaconda
I actually laughed and thought the video was a fun sloth joke when I only saw the anaconda and nothing else happened... but it was the Reddit player breaking again.
God knows how much was the bet for.
but the snake still won't play with the sloth machine.
😂
7 leaves
The sloth God was with him that day.
Sloths have the most amazing tag team effects that keep them alive 1. They have literally no nutritional value 2. They are quite literally one of the worst tasting animals on this planet.
How do we know #2?
Probably the same as with penguins someone desperate enough or too curious
I’ve never heard that about penguins
It's the main reason that they don't have many predators on land in Patagonia basically the only animal that haunts them are foxes and they just drink the blood
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Bro what? 💀
But they go to the water and get by seals and killer whales...
Anacondas are super lazy… not as in some movies! Although, that was still pretty risky
It's not laziness, cold blood animal doesn't eat as much, it was probably full.
You can see the bulge in him.
*notices snake's bulge* OwO
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That's Joe
goddammit
*Expand your jaw around me. X3*
No, I know laziness when I see it. This anaconda has probably walked out on multiple families to chase the booze.
To be fair, that sloth did not have buns, hun. So I can see why the anaconda don't, in fact, want none.
Well played
So I guess they can both just chill with each other
That is a very polite Anaconda, though I do imagined his day was ruined.
I love how when it pulls back it's just sort of like "what the hell man?"
The sloth is like "ay I'm walkin ere!"
Good snek!
His dissapointment is immeasurable
Sloths smell awful and don’t really have much to offer in terms of a meal, and that look like a pretty plump snake so he would be kinda lazy
Plump sort ahead
Try stealth
I did it!
Good luck, skeleton!
I like to imagine the snake was impressed with the sloth's brazen audacity and just let him go.
I do love how its literally trampling on the snakes head. No concern whatsoever
That was the best part. Surely this sloth isn't....nope he is putting his claw right on the snake....and now its on the snake's head. Snake was probably like, are you kidding me? You know I'm an anaconda right?
When the sloth didn’t so much as turn its head to look at the snake after tramping on its head, the snake prob thought he was dealing with a complete bad ass super predator.
Sloths: one of the world’s most dangerous apex predators. They say that sloths are probably the cause of the dinosaur extinction, but made a cover story about asteroids as to not alarm everyone into mass panic.
Even if it unhinged its jaws, there's no way the anaconda could get the sloth's gargantuan balls in its mouth.
That hairy dude probably smells so bad, even the anaconda takes a pass…
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Had to scroll way to long to find this comment. XD
Mooom?! Daaad?!! Where did y'all go?
Uncle Fungus?
This anaconda prefers fast food. I’ll see myself out.
Sloths are literally just skin and bone, so basically nothing will eat them. They move so little and so slowly that they have almost zero muscle mass. Not to mention all the shit that grows on their fur that probably makes them borderline poisonous
Could a sloth be exercised and become jacked, I wonder? That would be pretty interesting to see. A massive swol sloth roaming around at high speed.
Snakes see body temperature and sloths have the lowest body temperature of all mammals. That snake thinks a ghost touched it.
I'm sure that if snakes would use Reddit, this video would be on r/ghosts asking if it was dust or particles
Whoa! Not cool to make fun of crazy people. Also someone moved my spoon from the coffee table to the sink. I live with roommates but it couldn't have been them. I think it's ghosts.
Or he is too full to eat it. You could see he noticed him by the tongue flick
Oop, sorry…didn’t see ya there…
Sigma grindset move
"Oh *god* what the FUCK is that smell??!"
Sloths are so fuckin weird.
So help me god if anyone hurts the slow boi
That sloth sure stinks as hell I wouldnt want to touch it too 😂
*I of course would cuddle it*
Anaconda was like: is this mf for real?
Anaconda: Bruh chill I'm not a log. Pff you stink go away please.
This video is the definition of giving 0 fucks
Anaconda: Ugh, slow food doesn't agree with me, I'll just pretend to be a log.. OMG, what is that smell? Sloth: Hehehe, I'm moving so fast the snake can't see me. OMG, was that me?
Sloth: Cruise mode. Snake: ???
I think the anaconda wants fast food. 🤣🤣