Traveling through the alleys of perception, one sometimes wonders why some things are perceived as likable and others as unlikable? Who and what is the mysterious tie-breaker that decides whether something will be likable to us and something will be ugly?
As a classic example, we can take a comparison between two birds, the Toucan and the Tiger Parrot. While the parrot is at the peak of cuteness, no one likes the Toucan, they don't keep it in cages, they don't pet it on the head, they don't record videos of it spinning on its seat and upload them to YouTube. And the fact that the Toucan is a strange bird may be to blame for this. In fact, it can be said that the entire organism of the Toucan exists only as a carrier of the imposing beak. The Toucan primarily consists of a beak that occupies some 70% of its appearance. Why evolutionary processes have run away is unknown.
However, the Toucan, a resident of South America, is a kind of miracle of nature, a flying beak, an interesting bird with vivid colors that one would wonder how it even gets off the ground with all that beak on it. I like the Tucano.
Under the canopy of leaves and the world in which the toucan lives, another cute animal hangs out, and that is the tapir. The tapir does not have a single glamorous trait, it is not fast, it is not particularly bright and it does not have a special sense of smell - but at least it is fat, stocky and relatively slow. Although it serves as food for the glamorous Jaguar and the famous and disgusting anacondas, this creature that resembles an unfortunate combination between a fat Rat, Anteater and Donkey - is an infinitely cute and fine thing. Apart from the Amazon, it is also found in the Malayan jungles. However, it must be said that the tapir has one trait that no other species among the millions in the Amazon has. And that is the phenomenal sense for exiting a burned area. If there is a fire in that forest and there is a Tapir - follow the Tapir and you will escape death. Ignore the Tapir and you will end up as a charred corpse.
How and in what way this animal does it, whether it is a sixth sense, whether it is some mysterious radar in its head, whether it is some vibrations through the ground - is unknown. Regardless, the fact remains that the Tapir is a master at exiting the fiery labyrinth.
But the peak of cuteness is reached by another animal and that is the Wombat, a completely unusual marsupial from Australia. At first glance, it seems like an enlarged and fat variant of the famous Koala, however, it is a different creature, blocky and clumsy. It eats grass and leaves, makes strange sounds and recently it has become fashionable to be a pet. There is nothing spectacular about the wombat either, it is what it is, it just exists and lazily moves through the Australian expanses.
In relative proximity lives a bizarre, vague and gentle animal called the Human Fish. Although it is not a fish and even less a human, this snake-like and eel-like creature with arms and legs (!?) is possibly some kind of relative of the salamander or some similar form of amphibian. Its color is the same as that of human skin, its eyes are only for decoration because it is half-blind. And it is like that because it has adapted to live in underground waters, in caves, in abysses, in eternal darkness, like all Balkans in fact. Extremely endemic, it lives only in the Dinaric belt with an emphasis on Postojnska Jama as a place that attracts paradise from all over the world to see it. Thus, it is condemned to look at stalactites and stalagmites all day long and listen to the nasty language of the ugly Janez.
There is a miracle that is so cute that it becomes dull and unsympathetic, so good it`s actually bad. And that thing has a name.
Sloth!Yes, there really is an animal with such a name. And there is also a mortal sin with such a name. Unreal in its slowness and dullness, this unintelligent animal with a perpetual smile on its lips is difficult to perceive. Or maybe it is not smiling but laughing? But the same can be said about Gwynplaine, the hero of the film "The Smiler", a cult work of late silent film. Sometimes it is difficult to separate laughter from laughter... but let's get back to the sloth, that natural phenomenon. What can be said about a being that hates even being scratched? Due to his laziness, his fur is home to endless swarms of lice, fleas, nits, worms, flies, ticks and other annoying pests that parasitize the sloth. It doesn't help that his heart beats only a few times a minute, that his blood moves unreally slowly through his blood vessels and that his metabolism is so slow that he even hates to shit.
He simply collects his shit in a bladder provided for that purpose which he empties once every fifteen days, when after a whole day of climbing down six meters of wood with the help of his huge and strong claws - the sloth empties itself...
But all of these aforementioned animals pale in comparison to his majesty, the lord of the strange, the doyen of the bizarre - the Sloth. His name in Croatian is interesting - Čudnovati kljunaš, which is a perfectly well-chosen adjective for this obscure animal. It is an undefined creature that is a mammal, but despite that it lays eggs, hatches them (!?) and hatches like a bird, has a beak like that of a duck, of course proportionally enlarged to match the size of the Plague Doctor. And it is not a bird at all. It also has some rudimentary teeth with which it chews. There are also its paws and legs which, despite having large claws, are combined with fins with webbed skin, again an avian element grafted onto that of the mammal.
If that is not unusual enough, we should also mention the poisonous stinger that lurks hidden for potential danger and is ready for action and self-defense. The stingers are characteristic of some insects, not mammals at all. Its eyes are deeply and strangely set and act like those of snakes, crocodiles and similar reptilian beasts. It also possesses sonar, similar to that of whales, and its beak is its antenna through which it collects signals that are reflected from the environment and thus locates possible prey.
When it was first observed at the end of the 18th century in Australia (where it only lives), people were shocked by its appearance and the first scientists who were brought a dead platypus were offended because they thought that someone was trying to play a joke, to deceive and ridicule them through a Frankenstein-like joining of parts of various dead animals and birds. However, it was not a hoax and the reality of the platypus' existence soon dawned as an undeniable fact. Despite its thick fur (?!), water is its kingdom where it is fast and agile, and land is its reserve territory where it is slow and clumsy. The thick tail, identical to that of beavers, does not hinder its movement at all. It breathes equally well in water and on land. Perhaps the fact that it does not have a stomach like mammals but rather some kind of undefined digestive tract is just one more in a series of details that make it an exceptionally interesting animal. On the net, you can watch videos where domesticated platypuses enjoy being scratched like cats. One cheeky freak of the week.
Aboriginal legend tells of the Dreamtime, and that dream of Creation was also dreamed there. There, the competent deities were busy inventing animals and birds. When they finished their work and created all the living beings on the planet - they noticed that in all that mess, they had various organs and limbs left as unused surplus. Being averse to waste, they felt sorry to leave all those organs like that, alone and purposeless in themselves, but decided to put together a whole from what was left.
That whole was what is known today under the name - Platypus.
(Roger Mortis, 161)
