Re: What is the slowest animal on earth?

There are a lot of animals that never move. Corals, sponges, and barnacles are examples, but there are many more. Clearly, these animals would have to qualify as the slowest on earth, clocking in at 0 miles per hour.

Of the animals that do move, a lot depends upon size. Small, microscopic, animals might seem fast when they dart across your field of view in the microscope, but they are covering a very small distance. If you were to clock the speed of these types of animals, you wouldn't get a speed that was much better than 0 miles per hour.

Speed generally increases as size increases, just like an adult human can run faster than a child. However, there is one animal of mid to large size that is particularly noted for its lack of speed. This is the sloth.

The sloth is an arboreal (tree living) animal that moves very slowly. Because of this, its name has taken on the meaning of a slow, lazy person. However the sloth is not moving slowly because it is lazy. It lives in an area where eagles are the major predator. Eagles, like most predators, have very keen eye-sight and are particularly able to detect movement. When the sloth moves through the trees very slowly, it is hard to detect its presence. Thus, the sloth's slow speed is really an advantage against its major predator.

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