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. Athena, a two-toed female sloth, arrived at the National Zoo from a Texas zoo six years ago. (National Zoo)

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?