The term lazy or Have ( Folivora ) is the vernacular Nom given to some mammalian of tropical America belonging to the current order of the xenarthra. The lazy ones are known for their original lifestyle: almost always suspended on back in the trees and moving with slowness. They have impressive claws.

In addition to the species currently living, one knows four extinct species of lazy giants who lived in America, whose fossils of three of them were found in the asphalt of the Tar Pits of Rancho Brea which shelters recent Fossile S of the glacial last era (- 40 000 to -10.000 years).

Taxonomy and systematic

Before creation about the xenarthra, one classified them in the old toothless order of the S. under order of the Florivora (2001) is also named Phyllophaga (Owen, 1842)

The species the lazy one (also called board) listed to date are divided into two families:

• Family of the Bradypodidae in which one finds the Bradypus , also called board (name coming from their cry), at which the “hands” are provided with three claws and which are equipped with nine cervical vertebrae, which ensures to them a rotation of the head of approximately 270 degrees.
• Bradypus variegatus (Schinz, 1825)
• Bradypus tridactylus (Linnaeus, 1758) - lazy Sheep
• Bradypus torquatus (Illiger, 1811)
• Bradypus pygmaeus (Anderson & Handley, 2001) - Lazy dwarf
• Family of the Megalonychidae or Unau S : two claws and six vertebrae
• Choloepus hoffmanni (Peters, 1858)
• Choloepus didactylus (Linnaeus, 1758) - Lazy with two fingers

History

The four Paresseux giant S of the the United States were animals of big size which could be held upright. They were herbivorous and lived on the ground:

• Megalonyx jeffersonii
• Eremotherium laurillardi
• Nothrotheriops shastensis
• Glossotherium harlani

Biology

They have 18 teeth on the whole (but only molars) to chew sheets.

Their Metabolism, twice lower than that of the other mammals, gets a temperature to them which varies from 23 to 32 °C. The color of peeling, greenish, is due to the presence of chlorophyllian symbions, the Cyanobactérie S ( Cyanoderma bradypii or Cyanoderma choloepi ) and of the green algas ( Trichophilus welckeri ). The lazy one has some predatory, mainly the Jaguar, the Ocelot and the Aigle harpie. Thus the ground is, and by far, the place of its greater vulnerability, the animal goes down to urinate and déféquer only every ten days, and releases itself then of more than one third of its weight. The sheets coriaces, that the lazy one eats, involve a particularly slow digestion. He sleeps approximately 20 hours per day, suspended the upside down. He moves very slowly: less than 4,50 m at the minute in the trees.

The lazy one has one lifespan from approximately 30 to 40 years.

In Guyana, Have is to it the principal tank of the protozoon Leishmania braziliensis guyanensis , person in charge of Leishmaniose S cutaneous of the type espundia (the transmission is carried out by a Phlébotome (Lutzomyia umbratilis).

This animal has an astonishing resistance to the infections and the wounds.

Myth

The lazy one belongs to the myths founders in certain populations of South America, either ancestor of the mankind, or transformation of the man into these animals of the continuations of an ill deed (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Potière jealous and Luis Sepúlveda, the Old man which read love stories ).

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