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Google Ant
obli writes "In Google's official blog, Dr. Brian L. Fisher (an entomology researcher) writes about a newly discovered species of ant that he has named after Google (Proceratium google). The reason for this name is a tribute to the usefulness of Google Earth in his research. This is not the only species with a company name, there is also the GoldenPalace.com Monkey (Callicebus aureipalatii)." The California Academy of Sciences also has a short piece on the discovery along with a brief background of Dr. Fisher.
I can't wait for Google Dog. I expect it to fetch the paper AND pick out the important stuff based on my personal tastes.
What about it? It is a bottom feeder that disembowls itself when threatened! Sounds about right!
blah blah blah
Im fairly sure that a bunch of scientists all ready have done this sort of thing before. Im fairly certain they named some of their discoveries after people like George Bush. Unfortunately, I have no idea which species of animnal they used his name for because almost all searches for any refrence of animal and George Bush gets me websites for how he is an idiotic monkey.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Did he ask if he could use that name for the ant? Hmmmmm?
Two hundred years from now, this ant species will probably still exist. But the name will seem just as silly and puzzling to the scientists of that day as if Dr. Fisher had named the new species Proceratium petsdotcom.
In the long run, this little stunt will probably harm Dr. Fisher's reputation more than it will help Google's.
There is a louse named after Gary Larson.
I pitty the species that gets named after SCO Group.
Simon's Rock College
9/30/2005 10:37:00 AM Posted by Brian L. Fisher, Associate Curator of Entomology, California Academy of Sciences
At a time when the power of information technology doubles every 12 to 15 months and extends to capture every scrap we have, digitizing biodiversity information is a final frontier for IT. It's an essential step to ensure society maintains and hopefully increases bio-literacy. Toward this end, there's Antweb. It's a project from the California Academy of Sciences that has incorporated the Google Earth interface to provide location-based access to the diversity and wonder of ants: from your backyard to the Congo Basin.
As society advances, literacy increases and bio-literacy decreases. If you're illiterate, you may view a library as thinly sliced stacks of firewood; a Google search engine is meaningless. If you are bio-illiterate, a forest is at best a green blob to be consumed. If you are bio-literate, you see the diversity of the forest and understand that each animal, each plant, tells a story and has a place.
Google has helped us achieve free and democratic access to information, but now, with Google Earth, it's taken an important step to promote bio-literacy. Together with other institutions in the Bay Area, Google is uniquely poised to take on this enormous task.
There are two ways people need to access information on biodiversity: either have a name for which they want more information, or they are at a location and want to know what they will find there. On Antweb, you can access information about ants via location - and Google Earth allows for any scale of access via location. So you can be in Santa Clara County and see what ants you are likely to find. Soon you will be able to create a field guide for ants in any location defined in Google Earth.
We tried to get NASA's help to develop such a system for years with their mapping expertise and data, but Google Earth answered the call first. I am so impressed with Google that I have named an ant I recently discovered in Madagascar Proceratium google. Its bizarrely-shaped abdomen is an adaptation for hunting down obscure prey: spider eggs. Here's what it looks like.
I hope that Google will continue applying its skills to serve biodiversity data to conservation planners and the general public. Google has given us a tool to connect the 6 billion people on earth with our remaining biodiversity. Antweb welcomes any form of collaboration to help achieve this goal - and may the ants be with you.
Where i live google is even a verb. When you want to search for something you google for it. I imagine this is pretty annoying for the other search engines *cough*MSN*cough*. Im sure Microsoft would like to have their name on some bugs too...
ohh, wait, forget that last one....
HTTP/1.1 400
"I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords."
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR