Two Hundred Years of Calling Sloths "Miserable Mistakes"

For over two centuries, European naturalists were baffled by the sloth, labeling it everything from a bear to a "miserable mistake." This episode explores the bizarre history of sloth taxonomy, revealing how early science struggled to categorize an animal that defied every European standard. From Linnaeus's garbage-bin classifications to the DNA breakthrough that finally gave sloths their due, discover how the "glitch of the Enlightenment" became a masterpiece of evolutionary efficiency.