Life of Pi (film) Pi trains Richard Parker to accept him in the boat, and realizes that caring for the tiger is also helping keep himself alive. Weeks later they encounter a floating island of interconnected trees. It is a lush jungle of edible plants, fresh water pools and a large population of meerkats, enabling Pi and Richard Parker to eat and drink freely and regain strength. At night, the island transforms into a hostile environment. Richard Parker retreats to the lifeboat while Pi and the meerkats sleep in the trees; the water pools turn acidic, digesting the fish in them. Pi deduces that
Life of Pi his full name, Piscine Molitor Patel, as a tribute to the swimming pool in France. After hearing schoolmates tease him by transforming the first name into "Pissing", he establishes the short form of his name as "Pi" when he starts secondary school. The name, he says, pays tribute to the transcendental number which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. In recounting his experiences, Pi describes several other unusual situations involving proper names: two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim, and the other a committed atheist, bear identical names; and a 450-pound tiger