15 Slothiest Animals and Why They’re So Lazy

There’s slacking off from work, and then there’s spending 18 hours a day sleeping. Some animals are so fond of sleep that they spend weeks or months hibernating. And then there are the daily heavy sleepers that can afford to doze off for hours each day. Other animals are surely envious of their laziness because they can’t afford to do nothing for most of the day as they’re constantly running away from predators.

Koala

Koalas are extremely idle, sleeping up to 22 hours a day. They spend most of their time on eucalyptus trees, moving very little. As a result of this, these animals make terrible pets. Jokes aside, koalas are the epitome of laziness in the animal kingdom, with the evil sloths having a literal word for laziness named after them. “Why could it not have been koalaness instead of slothfulness?”, the koala lazily asks.

Giant Panda

Giant pandas sleep for 12 hours a day. They mostly eat bamboo, which doesn’t provide much energy. This means they need to conserve energy by sleeping often. Or they just do it because they like to. After all, being so big and strong is tough business, and when you don’t have to run from predators all the time, you can just spend time eating and sleeping to your heart’s content.

Hippo

Hippos enjoy spending their days lounging in the water, often dozing for up to 16 hours. These lumbering beasts love mud as well because it keeps them cool on warm, sunny days. But what they really seem to love is chomping down on watermelons. It must be a nice life, chilling in the water, eating summer fruit, and having mud baths. It’s basically a never-ending spa day.

Opossum

Opossums are champions of idleness and masters of trickery. As if sleeping for 16 hours a day isn’t enough, they put on a class act of playing dead when threatened. These misunderstood creatures may be lazy, but they’ll relentlessly eat any ticks they find along their path, and for that, we commend them. Carry on the brave fight, little opossum!

Lemur

These masked bandits like to take it easy by sleeping up to 16 hours every day. Lemurs in the wild can live up to 18 years, so this means they spend roughly 9,855 hours, or 12 years, asleep. If they slept for half that time, they’d probably have flying cars or something by now. But it’s a good thing for us that they’re so lazy.

House Cats

Wild cats, including leopards and cheetahs, spend their days lying around to conserve energy for difficult and risky hunts. After all, they need to be at their best to get the kill. House cats? They just like lying around because they can. And this is mostly because they’re usually pampered and loved. Who wouldn’t want to do nothing but sleep, eat, and play all day if they could?

Lion

The King of the Jungle spends his kingly time having kingly 20-hour sleep sessions. While he sleeps, the women of the pack are out hunting and taking care of the cubs at the same time. But the Queens of the Jungle aren’t exactly highly active members of their society either, sleeping between 15 and 18 hours each day.

Pig

Pigs are… happy as pigs in mud. Oinkers love spending time sleeping, usually between 12 and 14 hours a day. They also adore rolling around in mud and even sleeping in it. While we see mud as something very dirty, pigs are usually clean animals, and their mud routines are a way to clean themselves in preparation for a long, relaxing nap.

Armadillo

Armadillos belong to the same family of animals as sloths and anteaters, and the familial ties could not be more obvious. In fact, armadillos are even lazier than sloths, sleeping up to 18 hours a day. However, this is when they’re not rolling around, causing chaos in the neighborhood. But they’re cute—so cute that the name ‘Armadillo’ means ‘little armored one’ in Spanish.

Owl Monkey

Owl monkeys can’t fly, but they sure can spend a lot of time sleeping in the trees for up to 17 hours every day. Since they’re small, these animals understand they’d lose in a fight against a gorilla or an orangutan. So they prefer to look for food at night while the other primates sleep. You always have to be the standout in the crowd, owl monkey, don’t you?

Python

Long, slow, and slithering, pythons are the laziest snakes out there. These reptiles get a serious case of food coma because after they’ve had a scrumptious, nutritious meal, they’ll find a shady, protected spot and lay motionless for weeks. When you weigh 250 pounds and you’ve eaten the equivalent of a 300 pound meal, it’ll take some time for it to digest.

Echidna

Hey, it’s Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog! Knuckles the echidna! Oh. It’s just a regular old echidna. One that spends up to 170 days per year hibernating, doing nothing. That’s pretty lazy. Males are somewhat better in this regard because they hibernate for only 120 days or so. At least they bathe often, which is a good idea considering the BO after half a year of sleeping.

Sloth

Sloths are very sluggish, often dozing for up to 15 hours a day. This slow lifestyle helps them conserve the limited energy they get from their diet of leaves. Sloths also have a slow metabolism, which means they don’t need to eat as often. They’re most active when they need to poop, which is once a week, as they have to climb down to the forest floor to do so, usually in the same spot.

Nurse Shark

Nurse sharks are quite the couch potatoes of the sea. They’re the only shark species that doesn’t have to move to get water over their gills, hence the laziness. Nurse sharks don’t spend time exploring more of the ocean once they find a suitable mating site. The reason is that they’ll return to that spot over and over again, sometimes spending a long time in the same location.

Cuckoo Bird

Cuckoo birds aren’t just lazy but they’re terrible parents, arguably one of the worst in the animal kingdom. Instead of taking responsibility and raising their offspring themselves, these birds will lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. Once the eggs hatch and the hatchlings begin growing, they’ll overpower and push the other bird’s babies off the nest. The mother bird will then feed the cuckoo hatchling. You’ll agree that this is completely unacceptable behavior!

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