BEACHCOMBER

100 YEARS OLD AND STILL INVERTING REALITY...

EXCUSE me for a moment while I preen my intellectual plumage but I have just made a discovery that could change the way we view the world.

It came to me suddenly and totally out of the blue while I was sitting in a comfortable armchair idly leafing my way through some academic tome or other. I had just reached the foot of one right-hand page and flicked over to the next page with my right-hand index finger and then it came to me: sloths must be left-handed.

The reasoning was so obvious that I wondered why I had never seen it before. I immediately put my book down and searched the academic literature for research on handedness in sloths to see if anyone else had realised it.

I found two papers on the subject but both authors seemed to me to have missed something that was blindingly obvious. One study reported that lefthanded and right-handed sloths were equal in number, while the other study reported one group of right-handed sloths and another group equally split between right and left-handed. Further research, they agreed, was needed but thanks to my recent revelation this is no longer the case.

Sloths, you see, spend a great deal of time hanging upside down. If they happen to be reading a book when thus inverted, just ask yourself what happens when they need to turn the page. Just like me, they will flick the right-hand page over but because they are upside down, they will naturally flick it with the claw that is nearest to the page they are flicking. By doing so, they will conserve energy and since sloths are the greatest energy conservers in the animal kingdom, this is what they will do.

To see the truth of this, just imagine the problems a human left-hander has in page turning. While right-handers may just flick, the left-hander must draw his or her left hand all the way over the book to reach the right-hand page, which is considerably less energy efficient.

The sloth, being a prime exponent of energy efficiency, would not dream of wasting energy in that manner, so they must use their left hands for pageturning, the left hand being the one on their right when they are upside down. All sloths, whatever previous research said, must therefore be left-handed.

Oh, I just realised something. I have assumed, somewhat rashly, that upside-down sloths read books the right way up. However it is possible, some might even say highly probable, that sloths, when inverted, also invert whatever they are reading, perhaps even finding it easier to read something that has the same vertical orientation to their good selves.

If the book is also upside down, they would therefore save energy by turning the pages right-handedly, in which case we would have to conclude that they are not left-handed at all.

The earlier researchers are correct. I apologise for doubting them – further research is indeed needed. And before anyone suggests doing it on bats, let me say: Don’t be silly. Who ever heard of a bat reading a book?