NAMA : SINDDY MIRANTI UTAMI

PRE-TOEFL PERIODE 10 FEBRUARI 2018

Passage 2
There are two main kinds of sloth; the two-toed and the three-toed. Of these, the three-toed is
considerably the more slothful. It hangs upside down from a branch suspended by hook-like
claws at the ends of its long bony arms. It feeds on only one kind of leaf, Cecropia, which
happily for the sloth grows in quantity and is easily found. No predators attack the sloth-few
indeed can even reach it-and nothing competes with it for the Cecropia. Lulled by this security, it
has sunk into an existence that is only just short of complete torpor. It spends eighteen out of
twenty-four hours soundly asleep. It pays such little attention to its personal hygiene that green
algae grow on its coarse hair and communities of a parasitic moth live in the depths of its coat
producing caterpillars which graze on its mouldy hair. Its muscles are such that it is quite
incapable of moving at a speed of over a kilometer an hour even over the shortest distances and
the swiftest movement it can make is a sweep of its hooked arm. It is virtually dumb and its
hearing is so poor that you can let off a gun within inches of it and its only response will be to
turn slowly and blink. Even its sense of smell, though it is better than ours, is very much less
acute than that of most mammals. And it sleeps and feeds entirely alone.