Giant tunnels dug by massive sloths Deep inside Brazil, there are tunnels large enough for an individual to walk through. The tunnels are very neat and symmetrical, have not been caused by any known geologic process, and may be lined with claw marks. These mammoth tunnels are perhaps the craft of giant ground sloths, humongous “paleoburrows,” that no longer walk the Earth.
The largest tunnels dug by massive sloths measured 2,000 feet long, 6 feet tall, and 3 to 5 feet wide. An estimated 4,000 metric tons of dirt and rock were dug out of the hillside to create the burrow. It was the work of not one or two individuals but several generations.
However, tens of thousands of years after this megafauna did their digging, those tunnels still dot this part of South America. This discovery has a great feature, and up until the 2000s, little was known or written about this bounty of holes.
But since he came upon his first one near Novo Hamburgo, Brazilian scientist Heinrich Frank has found more than 1,500 tunnels and burrows that measure hundreds of feet long. Researchers have exposed one with branching tunnels. It had to be dug by numerous creatures over generations, not by one or two giant sloths. However, the big open question comes to mind: why?
The tunnels appear to be much larger than any burrowing animal would need to get away from bad weather or hungry predators. Some believe the burrows were dug by a genus of giant ground sloths, as large as modern elephants, that once lived in South America.
Because they were some of the biggest land mammals on earth, they exceeded in size only the mammoth. However, others believe that extinct armadillos, which were smaller than the giant sloths, were responsible for the burrows.
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