Could sloths help astronauts on long space trips?

Sloths are famous for moving very, very slowly. They sleep a lot, save their energy and spend much of their time hanging in trees. That might not sound useful for space travel - but scientists now think sloths could teach us something important about surviving very long journeys in space.

A team of researchers studied the DNA of a sloth and compared it with other animals such as anteaters and armadillos.

DNA is like a set of instructions inside living things and in sloths the scientists discovered special bits called "jumping genes".

These are tiny pieces of DNA that can move around inside an animal's genome - the genetic instruction book which helps it grow and live. Like moving an instruction to a different page.

The study was conducted by experts from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Germany, and the Hospital Sirio Libanes in Brazil.

They found that, in sloths, these jumping genes seem to be linked to mitochondria - the parts of cells that help turn food into energy.

Sloths have an amazingly slow metabolism, which means their bodies use energy very slowly. In fact, scientists say sloths have the slowest metabolism of any mammal on Earth. They're designed that way and are healthy, needing very little energy to survive.

On future missions to places like Mars, astronauts may need to spend months - or even years - in space. During such a long trip, saving energy and protecting the body will be very important.

Now researchers on the project have suggested that by studying how sloth cells work, they may learn lessons that could help them create new medicines, treatments or ways to protect the body during space travel.

Dr Marcela Uliano-Silva, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, said: "Sloths have the slowest metabolism of any mammal, yet they remain healthy. Understanding how they achieve this may reveal new insights into how cells manage energy efficiently.

"Evolution has already run billions of experiments. By studying unusual animals like sloths, we sometimes uncover biological solutions that humans never evolved."