Have you ever been told by your parents: “Laziness was born before you”? Well, they were right. Laziness was born long before you or me. She appeared with the animals, and some of them actually serve as her embodiment. Even a sloth compared to them is activity itself, although it will also be present in the list. So, without further ado – the top 10 laziest animals in the world.
10. Lion
Lions may be the kings of the savannah, but their majesties like to sleep. And they do it on a truly royal scale – from 18 to 20 hours a day. Lion habitats are hot, and hunting large prey requires tons of energy. Sometimes, in order to prepare for the next hunt, the lions doze for 24 hours.
9. Nurse Shark
Most sharks are perpetual motion machines because their breathing apparatus requires movement. But not the nurse shark, which is affectionately called the “sea stay-at-home”. This species can pump water through its gills without moving, which allows them to spend more than 12 hours on the ocean floor every day. They feed at night. But nurse sharks don’t need a lot of food, and what they eat is lazily absorbed rather than extracted in the process of actively chasing prey.
8. Giant Panda
Giant pandas have perfected the art of segmented sleep. These black and white bears sleep about 12 hours a day with an interval of three hours. Why is it taking so long? Bamboo, their main food source, is to blame for everything. Pandas love it, but bamboo is low in nutrients, so they have to eat at least 20 kilograms a day to survive! All this chewing and digestion greatly tires the panda’s body.
7. Echidna
Echidna is one of the funniest animals in the world sleeping for 12 hours a day. And who can blame him! Poor echidnas are stuck in hot Australia, but they can’t sweat to cool the body. At night they wake up to get food for themselves. But after sunrise, the echidna falls asleep again somewhere in the shade. And the echidna is one of the two mammals that lay eggs. The second is the platypus.
6. The night monkey (mirikina)
Where there is a snide and giant pandas to these monkeys, whose sleep can last 17 hours. These primates eat and socialize after dark. Because of this lifestyle, nocturnal monkeys have excellent eyesight, but they do not distinguish colors. Mirikins live in families consisting of monogamous parents and children who have not achieved independence. And night monkeys-dads take care of children more than moms.
5. Python
These snakes have a bad reputation, but a closer look at their lifestyle shows that they are lazy bums. Fearsome reptiles sleep up to 18 hours a day. Why are they so lazy? Pythons eat only once a week, and to digest a completely swallowed prey, they need a huge amount of energy. And they also have molting periodically (4-6 weeks) — energy is also spent on this.
4. Hippopotamus
Given their gigantic size, it is not surprising that hippos got on the lazy side of the activity scale. These giant mammals sleep from 16 to 20 hours a day. It doesn’t matter where to nap, on the ground or in the water, hippos are not picky, they can take a nap almost anywhere! At night, when the hot sun has disappeared from sight, hippos wander around their possessions in search of food. When these animals stumble upon a fertile piece of land, they can stand in one place for five hours, absorbing juicy grass and other plant food.
3. Sloth
Of course, the rating of the laziest animals could not do without the creature that first comes to mind at the word “laziness”. The notoriously slow sloths sleep about 20 hours a day. But we must pay tribute: two-toed sloths are a little faster than three-toed ones. The slow movement of sloths is explained by an extremely slow metabolism. It is curious that genetically sloths are closer to armadillos than to monkeys. And these animals go to the toilet only once a week, and they do it on the ground, where they are vulnerable to predators, and then return high up the tree.
2. Koala
People often call koalas “koala bears”, but this is a misnomer. Koalas are marsupials, not bears. These adorable fur balls stay awake no more than 2-6 hours a day. Like giant pandas, koalas’ almost constant sleep is associated with food. Most of their diet consists of eucalyptus, a food with a very high fiber content. And it takes all the energy of small koalas to digest it.
1. Adelaide Dwarf blue–tongued Skink
The Adelaide dwarf blue-tongued skink is the laziest animal on the planet. This is an ideal pet for a person who is too lazy to take care of an animal. To feed themselves, these harmless exotic lizards can sit for a long time with their mouths open, waiting for the food to get inside by itself. The same goes for water – they rely on raindrops falling on their tongue. Scientists believed that the dwarf blue-tongued lizard became extinct in the recent past, but it turned out that the insidious reptiles were just hiding! And with their giant blue tongue, male lizards brag to each other during the mating season, vying for the attention of the female.
