Q: Is there really an ant named after Google?

FYI

by Courtesy California Academy of Sciences: Courtesy California Academy of Sciences

You heard right. It seems that unusual species names aren't limited to scientists' favorite rock stars or Star Wars figures—now Internet search engines are in the game. Entomologist Brian Fisher named a new species of ant, Proceratium google, in honor of the mapping program Google Earth. Fisher, who chairs the entomology department at the California Academy of
Sciences, was impressed with the support he got from the Google Earth team when he was integrating the online warehouse of ant data, AntWeb, with the search functions of Google Earth. Now scientists can plot ant habitats in three dimensions or search for ant species by location. For the record, P. google lives in Madagascar and feasts exclusively on spider eggs. Get more ant facts at antweb.org.

Want to learn more about breakthroughs in electronics, medicine, nanotech, and more?
Subscribe to Popular Science and enter to win $5,000!

0 Comments

Popular Tags

Regular Features

  • The Doctor Is In with Isadora Botwinick | Weird and wild stories of the human body, health and disease
  • Sex Files with Susannah F. Locke | A broad view of new research and ideas in the sexiest of the hard sciences
  • Science Confirms the Obvious with Laura Allen | The research that makes us say "duh"

Popular Science Photo Pool


Share your photos in the Pop Sci pool at www.flickr.com!

Subscribe for 2 free issues!

POP_embeddedForm_cover_May09.jpg