We often mindlessly trample on snails and earthworms because they move so slowly compared to the average human, but there’s a whole world of animals out there that are even slower.
These are animals so sluggish that you could take a nap watching them move, and they would still be just a few inches away when you wake up.
While being slow isn’t the most favourable feature for an animal, these creatures have adapted well to their speed, with some even using it to their advantage.
For example, the garden snail’s sluggish movements help preserve its mucus secretion and avoid desiccation during dry conditions. Moving slowly means a lower metabolic rate, so they can also conserve energy during harsh conditions.
Below you’ll find a list of animals that move sluggishly enough to earn a shot at the title of the world’s slowest animals.
#1 The American Woodcock
The American woodcock, also known as the mudbat or Scolopax minor, is the only species in the woodcock bird group found in North America. These birds live in the damp, brushy floors of forests and are well known among other birds for their slow flight.
The American woodcock is rarely seen flying long distances, but it is especially noted for how slowly it moves across the ground.
It walks with a distinctive rocking motion, swaying its body from side to side while keeping its head and neck completely still. If you overlay their movement with music, like Martha Gane did on YouTube, it looks like a real dance move.
A 2016 paper published in Northeastern Naturalist suggested that the American woodcock walks this way as a defense tactic. Instead of camouflaging itself like it does when stationary, it signals its presence to lurking predators. This causes the predator to lose its element of surprise and may decide not to attack.
Apart from its rocky dance, the woodcock also flies at dawn and dusk to look for food, mate, or migrate to warmer areas when snow begins to cover its ground food.
According to Guinness World Records, this species holds the record for the slowest flight speed of any bird, at 5 mph.
Image source: r/Birdsfacingforward
#2 Banana Slug
The Ariolimac columbianus seems quite edible until you take a closer look and realize that this banana-like, seemingly still creature is actually a slug.
Unsurprisingly, the banana slug is bright yellow, usually over 26 centimeters long, and rests in a curved shape similar to a banana, as reported in a 2025 study published in the Journal of Heredity. In the rainforests of the Pacific Belt, it has earned a reputation as the second-largest land slug species.
According to National Geographic, banana slugs can reach a top speed of 6.5 inches per minute, making them among the slowest animals in the world.
They secrete a mucus-like fluid that forms a layer around their bodies, protecting their delicate skin, aiding respiration and reproduction, and leaving mucus trails on forest floors.
Image source: r/bayarea
#3 Three-Toed Sloth
The three-toed sloth belongs to the genus Bradypus, which literally means “slow-footed.” With a family name like that, it’s no surprise that all five species are generally slow-moving mammals.
Captured moving high up in forest trees in a video by Insider Science, the sloth moves at a maximum speed of about 0.16 miles per hour, making it the slowest mammal ever discovered.
However, the sloth’s speed isn’t its only interesting trait. It has claws suited for gripping tree branches as it hangs upside down and moves around.
A 2012 study published in the Journal of Biology Letters also describes how its anatomy includes adhesions that support the abdominal organs, helping the sloth’s lungs function properly while upside-down.
Research also found that this animal can store up to a gallon of urine and a third of its body weight in feces. The sloth lives high in trees, so it only comes down very slowly to the forest floor about once a week to excrete.
Image source: r/Awwducational
#4 Kakapo
It’s no surprise that the largest parrot species is also the slowest. The kakapo, also called the owl parrot, is a large, flightless parrot with green and yellow feathers that help it blend smoothly into the forests of New Zealand.
The nocturnal animal rests under trees during the day and becomes active at night. According to the Animal Ageing and Longevity Database, the kakapo has an average lifespan of 60 years, a maximum of 100 years, and an adult annual survival rate of about 99%.
Although the kakapo cannot fly, it has strong legs that allow it to walk long distances, though very slowly. It is also an excellent climber, so it can use its short wings as windbreaks or parachutes to descend from tall trees.
According to the New Zealand Department of Conservation, the kakapo is considered critically endangered and is now a national treasure of New Zealand.
Image source: r/NatureIsFuckingLit
#5 Galapagos Giant Tortoise
The Galapagos are the largest living species of tortoises and, because of their size, are also the slowest of them all.
Native to the seven Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, the giant tortoise typically weighs around 250-400kg, with some reaching up to 7 or 8 times that of an adult male. This size clearly impacts its movement, so the giant tortoise usually covers about 40 to 50 meters per day at top speed, according to National Geographic.
Besides their size and speed, Galapagos species are also unique in their ability to survive up to a year without food or water, if necessary. This is because their bodies have a slow metabolism, allowing them to survive on stored fat for a long time.
Image source: r/NatureIsFuckingLit
#6 Manatee
Also known as sea cows, manatees are large aquatic mammals closely related to elephants, both of which are classified as subungulates. These animals inhabit marshy areas and shallow waters in the Caribbean and Mexico.
The adults typically weigh between 800 and 1,200 pounds, according to the Dolphin Research Centre. However, the heaviest manatee ever recorded weighed 3,649 pounds.
Due to their weight, manatees can only swim in shallow waters at an average speed of about five miles per hour, making them one of the slowest animals in the world, according to National Geographic. However, they can also sprint at 15 miles per hour.
It’s no surprise that their leisurely lives give them an average lifespan of 40 years in the wild, and the oldest manatee ever, Snooty, holds a Guinness World Record for his 69-year lifespan.
They can also walk on the floor of their habitat, using their flippers as feet while they search for plants and weeds to eat. Manatees consume large amounts of food, so they spend most of their days looking for food.
This kind of diet quickly wears down their teeth, especially the molars. Therefore, the manatees have an adaptive feature that constantly replaces their teeth, as described in a 2012 paper published in The Anatomical Record.
Image source: r/NatureIsFuckingLit
#7 Slow Loris
Talk about living up to your name, and Nycticebus bengalensis definitely delivers. They are an adorable, wide-eyed species of primates with various color patterns on their fur. Mostly found in tropical forests, slow lorises are arboreal animals that rarely come down to the forest floor.
A 2025 paper published in Animals explains how they climb trees slowly and carefully, using all four limbs. This kind of movement, involving both hands and feet, is called clambering.
The slow loris is as adorable as it is dangerous to its predators. It secretes a toxin from its armpits, licks it, mixes it with its saliva, and then bites the attacker to deliver the venom, as a 2023 study published in Toxins describes.
Image source: r/Awwducational
#8 Gila Monster
The large, venomous Gila monster belongs to the order Squamata within the class Reptilia, which mostly includes lizards. They are native to the deserts of the southwestern United States and Mexico, and are easily identified by their colorful, beady scales, usually yellow or pink against a black background.
The lizard, about 22 inches long, is a slow-moving animal that spends most of its life underground in burrows trying to save energy and avoid the heat, according to a study published in Herpetological Monographs.
The Glia monster hunts eggs, insects, small birds, and mammals by ambushing them, even though it has venom in its teeth. It keeps its venom mainly for defending itself against predators.
Image source: wikipedia.org
#9 Garden Snail
These garden snails were originally native to the Mediterranean, and despite their slow pace, they’ve crossed borders to become the most common land snail worldwide. They are usually seen in cultivated areas, such as gardens, and in wild grass, most often after rainfall.
The garden snail has a rugged, brown shell into which it retracts its soft, slimy body when it senses a threat or an unfamiliar substance. Part of its soft body is its muscular foot that propels the body forward.
You can only move so fast with one muscle, so the maximum speed recorded in a garden snail is about 0.01 inches per second, according to the Guinness Book of Records. The garden snail secretes sticky mucus that allows it to move in a rhythmic pattern as it contracts its muscular foot. This slow movement makes the animal easy prey, but it also helps it survive, especially in dry areas.
According to research from the University of Exeter, the garden snail spends up to 30% of its energy producing slime, then moves slowly to conserve its limited energy, reduce water loss, and avoid desiccation.
Even smarter, groups of snails move in colonies so that others can piggyback on the slime left in the path of those that have gone ahead.
Image source: r/Silksong
#10 Sea Anemone
The sea anemone moves so slowly that if you look at one, it would seem perfectly still. They’re either driven by water currents, move by inflating themselves, or creep along, as described in an article by the British Marine Life Study Society. The only way scientists can study their movements is through time-lapse photography.
The colorful anemones are beautiful to humans, but not to the animals they prey on deep in the ocean and in coastal waters where they live. The anemones are notorious predators in seawater because they use an organ called a nematocyst to sting their prey before eating it.
A clip by Nat Geo Animals shows how they use this to feed on animals of different sizes, taking them into their central mouths, which can expand to engulf large animals like crabs and some fish.
Image source: r/itookapicture
#11 Starfish
Following their name, sea stars are a class of over 2000 species found on the ocean floor and in other marine habitats. The common starfish is, well, the most familiar species with five arms and some tube feet.
Research at Plymouth University shows that the starfish’s many tube feet, also called podia, expand and contract together to move the starfish at only 27 inches per minute.
A 2020 study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface also describes a faster ‘bouncing’ movement they sometimes perform, but that consumes more energy.
A fun fact about starfish is that they perform all their functions using a nerve net and no central brain.
Image source: r/starfish
#12 Seahorse
Seahorses are small marine fish that resemble horses, especially in the head and neck, which is why they are named so. Their heads are long with bent necks, and their bodies consist of bony plates arranged in rings.
Mostly found in temperate, shallow saltwater, the seahorse is a poor swimmer. It swims upright, not horizontally like most fish, a feature only shared with the razorfish, using their dorsal and pectoral fins. It uses the dorsal fins to propel itself and the pectoral fins to steer.
The dorsal fins flap quickly, but they can only propel the animal so far. The fastest speed recorded for the dwarf seahorse is about 5 feet per hour, as noted by the Guinness World Records.
While their fins aren’t designed to chase prey that moves faster than they do, seahorses rely on a special technique called pivot feeding to catch their food.
A 2013 study published in Nature Communications describes how it uses its long head to create a stealth zone that keeps the seahorse undetected until it strikes the prey.
Image source: r/biology
FAQ
Which is slower, a sloth or a snail?
The snail has a maximum recorded speed of 0.2 miles per hour, which is much slower than the sloth’s maximum speed of 1.5 miles per hour.
Which is slower, a sloth or a turtle?
The turtle’s land speed, ranging from 1.7 to 6.2 miles per hour, is faster than the sloth’s 1.5 miles per hour. The Pacific leatherback sea turtle once achieved a 22-mile-per-hour sprint in water.
Is a sloth or a koala slower?
The koalas are much faster than sloths, especially on land. They move at a maximum speed of 18 to 20 miles per hour, compared to the sloth’s 1.5 miles per hour. However, in water, the tables turn because the koala is not naturally adapted to swimming.
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