Was Sid The Sloth Inaccurate?
Disney is a beloved franchise, and one of their more popular movies is the movie “Ice Age.” With a cast of eccentric and fun characters, an entertaining plot, and real animals from the Ice Age period, it’s no wonder that the movie was so well received.
The fan favorite of the film though, is definitely Sid the sloth. Sid has a goofy appearance, and a goofy personality, but he’s unfailingly kind even when his friends and family aren’t quite as nice to him.
But is Sid accurate to the Ice Age period?
Sid is meant to be a Giant Ground Sloth, specifically a Megalonyx, a sloth that was native to North America during the Ice Age during the same time as the woolly mammoth and the saber-tooth tiger. This aspect they do get correctly, but it’s Sid’s size that raises questions.
When comparing Sid to sloths of today, he seems too big, but when comparing Sid to the ground sloths that lived during the Pleistocene?
The answer to that is a very resounding no.
Megalonyx was typically just under 10 feet tall (3 m) and over 2,000 pounds. For proper context, that means that Diego the saber-tooth tiger should have been considerably shorter than Sid, and Manny the woolly mammoth should have barely been taller. Saber-tooth tigers were about 4 feet tall, meaning that Sid would likely have been more than twice the height of Diego the saber-tooth tiger.
A woolly mammoth’s shoulder height was between 9–11 feet, which means that when including the head, the woolly mammoth would likely have been taller than a giant ground sloth, but not to the extent that Manny the woolly mammoth is taller than Sid the sloth.
In certain scenes, Sid can be seen riding Manny, and at times hangs off of Manny’s face. This definitely would not have been possible if “Ice Age” were using the correct sizes of the animals.
Outside of the size issues however, Sid is surprisingly accurate, considering he is a character in a children’s movie. Sid has the right coloration, a similar enough body type to be able to justify the animation choices, and he also has the curved claws that were characteristic of the giant ground sloth.
Sid eats plants in the movie, and most sources believe that giant ground sloths were herbivores, and that their claws were used for foraging and tearing bark off of trees, although some think that they might have been opportunistic omnivores.
Sid the sloth may not have been entirely accurate to the giant ground sloth of prehistoric times, but for a children’s movie he is impressively accurate, and for those curious about the animals in the movie, may provide a few interesting fun facts.
