Word: sloth
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...wife," as strongly deprecates the U. S. male's rabbitlike divorcing habits, his "I-can-take-it creed." Of the touted U. S. vitality he remarks: "No one was ever less of a born go-getter than the American. He is almost saurian in his sloth." Nervous instability is quite another matter: "I have never seen so much St. Vitus dance as since I've been here." For some years Wyndham Lewis has been one of the toughest, most provocative satirists alive. It is something of a tribute to the deep hold England has on her sons that...
...sloth, General Marshall at week's end shook Army traditionalists to the heels of their shiny boots. He announced that the Army is not only going to have more tanks and other armored vehicles, but is going to quit smothering them in the infantry and cavalry. His plan calls for a corps of two mechanized divisions, to be set up as a new and separate...
...sloth can swim milewide rivers. Plants grow on him. A heart, removed from one, beat half an hour. . . . Hummingbirds: there are more than 500 species. They can fly backward. Staple food is not nectar but insects. . . . Fish: bloodthirsty, nightmarishly ferocious, is the footlong, razor-toothed piranha. A school of piranha consumed a whole sheep in 2½ minutes flat. . . . Domestic note: Boa constrictors are used as pets. They are excellent ratters...
Physiologists Britton and Kline went down to Panama, collected a few sloths (which are fairly tame and amenable) and got to work. First, they clocked the animals' normal progress along the underside of a horizontal pole. Speed of a two-toed sloth: a third of a mile an hour. Speed of a three-toed sloth: two-ninths of a mile an hour...
...Sloths are not only undermuscled for their weight but also have an uncommonly low temperature. So Scientists Britton and Kline left their sloths out in the tropical sunshine long enough to raise their temperatures by five or six degrees, and the change was miraculous: they moved 50% faster. Similar speedups were also obtained by injections of adrenalin and prostigmin (an intestinal stimulant), and by scaring them. Subjected to such speedup techniques as this, the Virginia physiologists were pleased to report in Science last week that one thoroughly stimulated sloth hustled along the pole at the relatively dizzy pace...