 Hachat Audio presents The Truth About Animals, Stone Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife, written and read by Lucy Cook. This book is dedicated to the memory of my dad, who opened my eyes to the wonders of the natural world. Introduction Can sloths exist when they're such losers? As a zoologist and founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society, I get asked this question a lot. Sometimes losers is further defined, lazy, stupid and slow being perennial favourites. And sometimes the query is paired with the rider, I thought evolution was all about survival of the fittest, delivered with an air of bemusement or worse, a whiff of superior species smugness. Each time it happens, I take a deep breath and, with as much poise as I can muster, explain that sloths are by no means losers. They are in fact one of natural selection's quirkiest creations and fabulously successful to boot. Skulking about the treetops, barely quicker than a snail, and being covered in algae, infested with insects and defecating just once a week, might not be your idea of aspirational living, but then you're not trying to survive in the highly competitive jungles of Central and South America, something the sloth is very good at. When seeking to understand animals, context is key. The secret to sloth's extraordinary endurance is their lethargic nature. They are paragons of low energy living with a suite of ingenious energy-saving adaptations honed over many millennia and worthy of the most eccentric and gifted inventor. I won't launch into the full list now. You can read all about the sloth's innovative upside-down life in Chapter 3. Suffice to say, I'm a sucker for an underdog. The reputation of the sloth was sufficiently besmirched that I felt compelled to found the Sloth Appreciation Society. Armotto being fast is overrated. I toured a talk on the unexpected truth about this much maligned creature to festivals and schools. It traced sloth-based slander back to a clique of 16th century explorers who took it upon themselves to brand this quiet vegetarian pacifist, the stupidest animal that can be found in the world. This book grew out of those talks, and the need to set the record straight, not just for the sloth, but for other animals as well. We have a habit of viewing the animal kingdom through the prism of our own rather narrow existence. The sloth's arboreal lifestyle is sufficiently extra-terrestrial to make it one of the world-