When European explorers first traveled to the Americas, they found strange and wonderful creatures unknown back home. However, these explorers weren't artists, and relied on others to illustrate what they described. André Thevet was a French missionary who spent ten weeks in Brazil and documented his experiences in his 1557 book Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (Singularities of France Antarctique). Artist Jean Cousin was enlisted to illustrate the work, which included an introduction to the sloth, an animal that was completely new to Thevet's French readers.
Thevet started work on Les Singularitez almost immediately upon returning to France. The book became a compilation of his own ventures as well as second-hand knowledge, including descriptions of South America obtained from French sailors. His text suggests that he had some first-hand experience with sloths, as the description is much more accurate than the illustration attributed to Cousin. Thevet writes that it has "the size of a very large African monkey" and "three claws, four fingers long ... with which it climbs trees where it stays more than on the ground. Its tail is three fingers long, having very little hair.” Rather than take in some of the nuances, the illustration focuses on Thevet’s description of a "little bear" with a head "almost like that of a baby” and translates that to a long-clawed bear with an actual human face. Nevertheless, Thevet had some imaginative stretches of his own, as he also states that it was "never seen eating" and that the local people had watched "to see if it would feed, but all was in vain."
If you think that's inaccurate, you should see the depiction of the "Succarath," a creature we don't even know the inspiration for. Read about Thevet's travels and the book that resulted at Smithsonian.