As many of you might have noticed by now, I’m pretty obsessed with anything to to do with Phish, fish, and fishing. One trip through our fishing archives and you’ll see that I’m pretty much posting fishing-related content all day, urryday.
It’s rare though that I come across a fishing new story that has some sort of attachment to the other things in the world that I enjoy, but today I found an announcement of a newly-discovered species of catfish that has huge bug-eyes, and has subsequently been named after ‘Greedo’, the bug-eyed character from ‘Star Wars’.
The scientific name of the species is ‘Peckoltia greedoi’ and as you saw in the video above it was discovered by Auburn University professor Jonathan Armbruster in Brazil’s Gurupi River.
Lindsay Miles of Auburn University’s ‘The Newsroom’ reports:
Jonathan Armbruster, biological sciences professor and curator of fishes for the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, has named a previously unknown species of catfish in honor of the enigmatic Star Wars fan favorite, Greedo.
The suckermouth armored catfish, Peckoltia greedoi, was found in 1998 by researchers along the Gurupi River in Brazil and is known physically for its large, dark eyes, sucker mouth and protruding bristles.
Armbruster obtained the specimens in 2005 for a manuscript he was preparing on the genus. Ten years later, he, along with David Werneke, Milton Tan and Chris Hamilton, all of the Department of Biological Sciences, was examining the specimen for characteristics when the connection was made.
“Chris looked at the specimen and said ‘that looks like that guy from Star Wars,'” said Armbruster. “After a little prodding, I realized he was talking about Greedo. We then knew what the name had to be. The Peckoltia greedoi does bear a striking resemblance to Greedo.”
Greedo, a bounty hunter from the spaceport Mos Espa, was killed by Han Solo in a brief scene from “Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope.”
“As a 7-year-old kid, I watched Star Wars in the theatre and it was a life-changing experience for me,” said Armbruster. “I became a lifelong fan, and I now share that with my son. Greedo has always been a personal favorite of mine.”
I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the original ‘Star Wars’ films (and Sci-Fi in general), so it’s pretty cool to see an über fan actually get to bring his obsession with the film franchise into the real world. As for me, if I ever had the opportunity to name a new species I’m pretty certain that I’d use that chance to take a dump on someone I hate, like Lena Dunham perhaps.
For more on this Greedo/Star Wars fish you can head on over to Auburn’s ‘The Newsroom‘, or check out Live Science’s write up.