“We share a lab with a guy who works on spiders and the fish was out and one of his students was in there,” Armbruster, a Professor and Curator of Fishes who’s been at AU for 16 years, told TWER. “He said ‘that looks like that guy from Star Wars. We were like, ‘which one?’ He said ‘I don’t know… Greedo?’ From that point on we’d knew that would be the name.”
Here’s how Armbruster and Co.’s paper introduced P. Greedoi:
Named for Greedo of Rodia, a bounty hunter killed by Han Solo in Chalmun’s Spaceport Cantina in the movie “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” (Lucasfilm, Twentieth Century Fox, 1977) with whom this species shares a remarkable resemblance.
The designation has attention on several geek culture sites, most notably Nerdist. Armbruster sasy he “thought it might, but that’s not why we did it.”
“Naming things can get boring,” he says. “It’s fun to liven it up a bit.”
In 2013, the spider scientist who shares the lab with Armbruster made news by naming a newly discovered species of spider after U2’s Bono. In 2012, he livened things up for Auburn fans by naming another spider after Aubie.
h/t Big Shiny Robot.
Related: Auburn coed earns Trekkie street cred with her Toyota.
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