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Google have an ant named after them

Behold!!

The Proceratium google
proceratium google is an ant with an unusually shaped abdomen

Brian L. Fisher, Associate Curator of Entomology, California Academy of Sciences has named this ant after google. Mr. Fisher was so impressed with the help google gave him in setting up a “bio-map” of ants around the world using google earth that he named an ant after them!

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.

Google have allowed antweb (run by Mr. Fisher and the California Academy of Science) to create an interface to google earth. So now using google earth and linking it to the antwebs mappings you can see where different species of ants around the world have habitats! It’s pretty cool.
google earth with antweb interface

This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2005 at 2:37 pm and is filed under The Internet, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “Google have an ant named after them”

  1. Alex Says:
    May 9th, 2006 at 7:06 pm

    I think its brilliant that you can link up different species of an animal or insect throughout the world using Google Earth.

    This can help us gain a better understanding of migration and evolution throughout the species.

    Excellent work with the mapping aswell must have taken some time.

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