Folivore:
- any chiefly leaf-eating animal or other organism, as the koala of Australia that subsists on eucalyptus. [Dictionary.com]
Noted in “Busy doing nothing: How sloths mastered life in the slow lane,” Jason Bittel, NewScientist (23 December 2017, paywall):
Part of the reason sloths are such extreme energy savers is their diet. They are arboreal folivores, meaning they live in trees and eat leaves. It is a deeply unpopular lifestyle choice, occurring in just 0.2 per cent of mammal species, and for good reason: leaves tend to be rather difficult to digest and contain few nutrients. Some tree-living leaf-eaters, such as howler monkeys, get around this by gorging on massive quantities of the stuff.
Sloths have adopted a different strategy: they nibble a bit here and there, making sure to keep their stomachs full. And they don’t rush digestion. It can take anywhere from two days to nearly two months before swallowed food emerges again as dung, which makes this the longest digestive process on record for a plant-eating mammal. That’s particularly weird when you consider that among mammals, the digestion rate typically depends on body size, with big animals taking longer to digest their food.
