Sloths only poop once a week. The event is called 'the poo dance' because they wiggle their butts.
Sloths Do a Weekly 'Poo Dance' When They Finally Go
Imagine holding it in for an entire week. For sloths, this isn't a challenge—it's their normal bathroom schedule. These famously slow mammals only defecate about once every seven days, and when nature finally calls, they descend from their treetop homes to perform one of the animal kingdom's most peculiar rituals: the poo dance.
The wiggle is real. After climbing down to the ground (a journey that can take 30 minutes), sloths begin swaying their hindquarters back and forth in a distinctive shimmy. This butt-wiggling helps them dig a small hole in the ground where they'll do their business. Three-fingered sloths use their stubby tails to excavate, while two-fingered sloths use their entire pelvic region to create a shallow depression.
Why Risk Death for a Dance?
Here's where it gets serious: more than half of all sloth deaths happen during bathroom breaks. On the ground, sloths are vulnerable to predators like jaguars, ocelots, and harpy eagles. They can't run, they can't fight, and they're lugging around what amounts to a third of their body weight in stored feces. It's the ultimate high-stakes potty break.
So why not just go from the safety of the trees? Scientists have proposed several theories:
- Fertilizer service: Sloths might be fertilizing their favorite trees, creating a nutrient-rich food source
- Moth hotels: Sloth fur hosts moths that need ground contact to lay eggs; the poop provides food for moth larvae
- Chemical messaging: Leaving scent markers could help sloths communicate or find mates
- Bowel stimulation: The wiggling motion might help trigger the digestive system
Despite years of research, scientists still can't definitively explain why sloths risk their lives for this weekly ritual. The mystery persists.
When You Gotta Go (Eventually)
The sloth's glacial metabolism is the reason for their infrequent bathroom visits. Everything moves slowly inside a sloth—digestion can take up to a month for a single meal. Their low-energy leaf diet and minimal movement mean they simply don't produce waste very often.
When they finally do go, it's substantial. That stored third-of-their-body-weight we mentioned? All released at once. After finishing, many sloths perform another little wiggle dance to cover up the evidence before making the perilous climb back to the canopy.
The poo dance might seem comical, but it represents one of nature's great unsolved puzzles: why would evolution favor such dangerous behavior? Until scientists crack the code, we're left admiring the commitment of an animal willing to risk everything for proper bathroom etiquette.
