page_title: Three-toed sloth
section_title: Lifecycle
hierarchical_section_title: Three-toed sloth / Behavior / Lifecycle
caption_attribution_description: English: Three-toed sloth crossing road in Costa Rica
context_page_description: The three-toed sloths are arboreal neotropical mammals. They are the only members of the genus Bradypus and the family Bradypodidae. The four living species of three-toed sloths are the brown-throated sloth, the maned sloth, the pale-throated sloth, and the pygmy three-toed sloth. In complete contrast to past morphological studies, which tended to place Bradypus as the sister group to all other folivorans, molecular studies place them nested within the sloth superfamily Megatherioidea, making them the only surviving members of that radiation.
context_section_description: Members of this genus tend to live around 25 to 30 years, reaching sexual maturation at three to five years of age.
  Three-toed sloths do not have a mating season and breed year round. Females give birth to a single young after a gestation period around six months. The offspring cling to their mother's bellies for around nine months. They are weaned around nine months of age, when the mother leaves her home territory to her offspring and moves elsewhere. Adults are solitary, and mark their territories using anal scent glands and dung middens.
  Male three-toed sloths are attracted to females in estrus by their screams echoing throughout the canopy. Sloth copulation lasts an average of 25 minutes. Male three-toed sloths are strongly polygamous, and exclude competitors from their territory. Males are also able to compete with one another within small habitable territories.
  The home ranges used by wild brown-throated three-toed sloths in Costa Rica include cacao, pasture, riparian forests, peri-urban areas and living fence-rows. For the first few months after giving birth, mothers remain at just one or two trees, and guide their young. At about five to seven months of age, when the young have become more independent, mothers expand their resources and leave their young in new areas. During natal dispersion, three-toed sloths prefer tropical forests, often using riparian forest habitat to disperse while avoiding pastures and shade-grown cacao. The home range for mothers are larger than those of young. After separation, only the mothers use the cacao agro forest, but both use riparian forest. Different types of trees are used by both mother and young, which indicates that this agricultural matrix provides an important habitat type for these animals.
caption: Three-toed sloth crossing a road in Alajuela, Costa Rica
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