Beloved sloth who wasn't slothful dies at zoo

ATHENA was a sloth who lived at the National Zoo in Washington, and, according to the zoo, was a much beloved creature who had showed that sloths need not be slothful.

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Instead, she had been spirited and rambunctious, the zoo said Monday in reporting her death. The seeming absence of slothfulness in this sloth seemed to raise the old question from Shakespeare: What's in a name? Athena had been in deteriorating health and died Nov. 13, aged 7, at the zoo hospital while being kept overnight for observation. No precise cause of death was given.

"We miss her dearly," the zoo said.

Although not cited by the zoo, one of her distinctions was perhaps her service as a reminder of a well-known listing of human faults and failings.

Athena was one of the zoo's only three members of a species whose very name was one of the seven deadly sins: sloth.

One listing of the seven goes: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.