Daniel was watching a sloth video. Mom asked why he thought they were so slow.

He said lazy.

He was wrong.

Sloths are one of the most extraordinarily well-adapted animals on the planet. The slowness is not a flaw. It is the entire strategy. And by the end of this episode, Daniel agrees.

Here is what is actually going on.

Sloths eat leaves. And leaves are a terrible food source -- very low in calories, hard to digest, and in many cases mildly toxic. Most animals avoid them for exactly that reason. But sloths have a highly specialized stomach with multiple chambers that slowly breaks down the toxins and extracts what little nutrition is there.

Slowly being the key word. A sloth's stomach can take up to a month to fully digest a single meal.

Because the food provides so little energy, a sloth simply cannot a ...