Scientists Find a New Frog, Name it After Ozzy

The rule of scientific nomenclature says “you discover it, you get to name it. Just make sure you follow the Latin procedures.”

A guy named Pedro Peloso, a postdoctoral fellow at  Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Brazil, was tramping through the Amazon rainforest when he and his colleagues found a little frog about three-quarters of an inch long. He may be a little guy, but he apparently has an overly-large vocal sac that makes him pretty loud. And he’s the only frog in existence that makes a sound like a bat.

Specimens were brought back to the lab where they were studied and quickly began nicknamed “the bat frog.” This led to a discussion of Black Sabbath and Ozzy who famously bit the head off a bat in 1981. “Why not name the bat frog after Ozzy?”

So they did. Say hello to Dendropsophus ozzyi.

Ozzy isn’t the first musician to have a species named after him, of course. Go here for more. Thanks to Tom for the link at National Geographic.