New species of falcon named after Millennium Falcon
As a Star Wars fan, I was excited to read this e-mail from my friend Hugh who’s doing an apprenticeship studying birds in Madagascar. The lab he’s working at recently discovered a new species of falcon, and they’ve decided to name it the “Millennium Falcon.” From his e-mail:
The scientific name is falco milleannus which means Millenium Falcon. How cool is that! The “official” explanation has nothing to do with Star Wars, but we’re all getting a good laugh out of it here because of the double meaning. My boss came up with the name. Check out the press release, they even quoted me at the end!Huey
You can read the whole press release here. Very cool.
Comments
Happy April Fool’s Day to you!
Posted by: Dale Cruse | April 1, 2007 10:49 AM
This is a beautiful piece of work. I was entirely on board until the last third.
Posted by: Adam | April 1, 2007 12:02 PM
That’s good. You have to look twice to get it.
Posted by: Anonymous | April 1, 2007 7:28 PM
I was having a pretty shitty day and this just redeemed my faith in humanity.
Posted by: Thomas | April 3, 2007 10:30 PM
Technically, the kestrel run is measured in distance, not time. Based on the first known mention of the run (a document scientists cannot conclusively date, but say comes from long ago, in a place far, far away), it would be more likely that the bird completed it in 12 kilometers. Dr Ohlo is clearly a scoundrel.
Check here for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec
Posted by: Dan | November 17, 2007 8:47 PM
LIES!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2008 10:45 PM