Giant Sloth

An elephant-sized sloth might sound cute to us because we imagine it with the same weird, sloppy grin as today’s sloths, except gigantic. The truth is that no one knows precisely what this extinct animal looked like.

Debates still rage on today about what drove this large animal to go extinct, but most agree that it was due to human overhunting and climate change. When temperatures began to grow at the end of the ice age, conditions in the riverine grasslands became hotter and wetter. This changed the food scene and hungered the giant sloths. Some remains from over 12,000 years ago also show evidence of human butchery.

There were at least 23 different kinds of this species, the largest in the Americas. The enormous giant sloths were up to 20ft long and weighed 4 tons. Their claws were around 7in long, and they used them to strip the tree branches. Their massive size meant they weren’t at risk of being attacked by most of the creatures they encountered.