三趾樹懶

前天邀家人去看李安執導的「少年Pi的奇幻漂流」，大概是這個月所發生最好的事了。關於這部片，很想多寫點東西，又覺得自己對電影這個文類幾無了解，就姑且閉嘴。（有誰願意跟我多談談電影嗎？）（章晉唯我沒在點名。）

看完電影後我決心把小說也讀過一遍。昨晚睡前看了前幾章，開頭某章寫到Pi在加拿大的大學主修動物學，畢業論文研究三趾樹懶，原文是three-toed sloth，我原本不曉得sloth是什麼，便上YouTube搜尋，搜到一支讓我看了入迷的短片。請注意，影片是以正常速度播放的。




以下是《Life of Pi》小說裡描述這慵懶生物的段落，因為沒時間，就不翻譯了，但這段實在令人莞爾，值得一看。

It moves along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour. On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah. Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour. The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world. On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents unusual dullness and 10 extreme acuity, Beebe (1926) gave the sloths senses of taste, touch, sight and hearing a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a rating of 3. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur. As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound. Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or feeding sloths elicited little reaction.

當一個人的生活長期處在瞎忙狀態，看見天底下有這種生物，而且竟能在大自然中存活，心裡會湧起一股讚嘆，感念造物主的神奇，但接著就會咕嚕嚕冒出酸意。

我想三趾樹懶在自然界裡應該沒有朋友，一是因為牠們終日睡覺或恍神，無暇經營社交生活，二是因為其他物種想必很嫉妒牠們。

YouTube上還有一支Sloth Crossing the Street- I Believe I Can Fly短片，讀了上面那段文字後，看這支影片很難不哈哈大笑。

延伸閱讀：
蝸居：自己的房間