The Ice Age secrets of White Sands national monument

We think of sloths as slow, quiet, almost comical animals, but Pleistocene giant ground sloths were nothing like the sluggish DMV employee in Zootopia. Picture an animal weighing in at around three tons, measuring 6m from head to tail, with large, sharp clawsthen imagine facing down a group of them.

Sloths would have been formidable prey...Their strong arms and sharp claws gave them a lethal reach and clear advantage in close-quarter encounters.