For October half term this year, we hid eight sloths in the displays at the Museum of Zoology. We had planned for these to be up until November 7 for you to find, but circumstances have changed and we have had to close our doors once more. But we can’t leave you without access to our wonderful sloths, so here’s a Puggle Club story all about Sleepy the Sloth looking for the perfect place in the Museum to take a nap…

Sleepy the Sloth

No lullaby or counting sheep
Did Sleepy need to fall asleep.
Dangling from his three-clawed toes,
The sloth found he could easily doze
Up in the forest treetops high,
Where leaves and branches touch the sky.

But imagine now, if you will
Sleepy’s here, not in Brazil
Where do you think he would choose
To hang around and start to snooze?

In the Museum under the whale?
Inside its mouth or beneath its tail?
An ocean giant is not perhaps
The ideal place for slothy naps.

What about an elephant tusk?
The perfect spot from dawn til dusk?
But smooth and curved, those tusks look slippy
Sleepy needs something much more grippy.

Antlers. They should do the trick.
But which set should Sleepy pick?
The pointy muntjac’s aren’t ideal,
Do the reindeer’s have more appeal?

Maybe Sleepy would sleep well
Protected by a giant clam shell?

A trickier place to take a rest
Is underneath a lion’s chest?
Or clinging to a seahorse fin?
Or underneath the shoebill’s chin?

But wait, we need look no more
As Sleepy’s found a place to snore
A place of comfort to be sure
Hanging from cousin Megatherium’s claw.

(words by Rosalyn Wade, sloth illustrations by Pablo Donado)

Which spot would you chose for Sleepy to take his nap? High up with the giraffe, or beneath a turtle shell? Chose your favourite spot from the pictures below.

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Did you know?

• There are six different types (or species) of sloths alive today. Four of them are types of three-toed sloth and two of them are types of two-toed sloth.

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Illustrations by Pablo Donado

• Sloths can sleep upto 20 hours each day!

• Sloths are found in Central and South America, living in the trees of tropical rainforests.

• Sloths eat leaves, and about once a week they climb down the trees to have a poo.

• There were many other types of sloth alive in the past. The giant ground sloth Megatherium died out around 8000 years ago and is one of many species of ground sloth – this animal the size of an elephant would not have been climbing trees!

Why not make yourself a mossy, mothy sloth with our Slumber of Sloths Crafty Creatures post.