Animal of the week

Salient’s inaugural Animal of the Week is the humble sloth: three-toed or two-toed, it’s academic, as both are cooler than cool (ice cold!). In the last week of trimester, with deadlines piling on top of more deadlines, we could all learn from the sloth’s relaxed outlook on life. (Excuse the anthropomorphism, but, fuck, it’s Animal of the Week.) Viz: the excellent video ‘Meet The Sloths’ (vimeo.com/11712103), on the uniformly adorable inhabitants of the Aviaros del Caribe sanctuary in Costa Rica. If this is to be considered exemplary of sloth behaviour, all they do is eat beans, play with their hair, and chill. The last sloth pictured is a full-grown specimen reclining in a hanging bamboo chair, a philosophical smile playing on his lips as he revels in his zen (pictured left below). Fellow guru Uther Dean maintains that this sloth “would be able to see through time, if time was not so inconsequential a concept to him”. Dean adds, “Basically, you just know he’d tell really good stories down at the pub.”