New frog species named after Ozzy Osbourne

Name for bat frog derived from incident where the rock star mistakenly bit a bat’s head off during a performance.

A newly discovered frog species has been named after the rock and roll legend Ozzy Osbourne. The newly discovered species were discovered in the Brazilian Amazon during a biodiversity survey conducted by scientists in 2009, reported IANS.

The team of scientists brought the collection of the ‘bat frog’ to the lab, which triggered a conversation about their penchant for Osbourne and his band Black Sabbath, according to loudwire.com. It was during these discussions that Pedro Peloso, who discovered the frog, chose to pay homage to Osbourne by naming the species ‘Dendropsophus ozzyi’.



Scientists drew inspiration for the frog’s name from the infamous incident where the English rock star bit off a bat’s head during a live performance in 1981, mistaking it to be rubber, according to Zootaxa, a journal for zoological taxonomists. Ozbourne’s daughter Kelly was thrilled by the honour conferred upon him. She took to Twitter to express her excitement. “You know you have made it when they name a whole new species of frog after you! Congratulations, dad @OzzyOsbourne,” she tweeted along with the link of one of the articles about the study.



Peloso realised that he had discovered a new species as soon as he heard its croak. “I had never heard anything like it,” he said, the National Geographic reported. An interesting feature of the species is that the male frog has an unusually large vocal sac and almost transparent skin, which inflates to produce a high-pitched chirping sound. For a survey that has yielded a remarkable discovery, Peloso’s equipment was relatively low-tech. He carried a flashlight, plastic bag and a digital audio recorder to capture the sounds made by the diverse species he collected.

This isn’t the first time that a species has been named after a musician. The recently described tarantula species was named after John Lennon, simply because the discoverer idolised the legend, reported iflscience.com. In 2012, another new species of tarantula was named after Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine. In the same year, a 420 million-year-old marine worm was called ‘Kingnites diamondi’ as homage to the Grammy Award-winning King Diamond. In 2006, the same scientist dedicated another species of marine worm to Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister.

Jose Padial, an assistant curator at the Carnegie Natural History Museum in Pittsburgh, who wasn’t involved in the study, was of the opinion that the news of a new species being discovered in the well-studied region of the Amazon was a sign of the high biodiversity of the area. “The work was very thorough and represents just how little we know about life in the Amazon,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2014.

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