Lazy Saturday morning thought on the sloth

So, a thought: the name of the sloth - the mammal - being a native of the Americas almost certainly postdates the word 'sloth' meaning laziness. Which means that the poor animal was named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins. How unfair. One day you're minding your own business and the next someone discovers you and suddenly you're the physical embodiment of a lack of virtue. It's not like people saw bonobo monkeys and called them "lusts".

Random sloth factoid from that Wikipedia entry: sloths can account for as much as half the total energy consumption and two-thirds of the total terrestrial mammalian biomass in some areas.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow, Daryl, now you're the blogosphere's version of Jack Hanna.

Tell me some info about aardvarks!
15 October 2005 at 20:26
Anonymous said…
At the risk of sounding like a smart alec...I believe it is a chicken-egg problem between the animal and the sin. My other encounter with the seven sins (gluttony greed pride sloth lust wrath envy) did not produce the same parallel vocabulary (Unersättlichkeit Habgier Stolz Trägheit Wollust Zorn Neid respectively) where Trägheit is the sin and Faultier is the animal...

Zzzzz....
16 October 2005 at 07:48
T said…
I was going to add some trivia about the sloth but I was too lazy...
17 October 2005 at 08:59
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