Dungeons and Dragons has been a popular pen and paper role playing game that has made similar success into computer games. Now the game series has become an inspiration for a new species. A Dungeons and Dragons character inspires a new species name.
Over the years, Dungeons and Dragons has inspired many things. Many MMOs today have been derived in some way to the pen and paper game. Now the game has even inspired science, as a new species is named after one of the characters from it.
The new species found is a type of land snail. Biologists from the Natural History Museum of Stuttgart and the Zoology Museum of Sao Paolo have found new species from Brazil's caves. The biologists have looked at flora and fauna that can be found in the caves.
Dr. Rodrigo Salvador, Daniel Cavallari and Luis Simone have studied different species that can be found in the caves. Those species can be very small. One of those small species is a new type of land snail.
The new snail is small at only two millimeters in length. It has been given the scientific name of Gastrocopta sharae. The name is derived from Shar, the goddess of darkness and caves from Dungeons and Dragons, according to Science Daily.
The researchers have explained that species are usually named after Roman and Greek deities. Shar however has been chosen because of her background. She is part of the mythos of Dungeons and Dragons, a game that has remained popular even after a long time.
Dungeons and Dragons has been an inspiration for other species' names as well. The same team has named a snail from the Atlantic Ocean after another character from the game, as Pensoft Blog reports. The scientific name for that snail is Halystina umberlee, after the goddess Umberlee.
Video games have many characters, and they could inspire people to name new creatures after them. A Dungeons and Dragons character inspires a new species name. A six-legged robot has been made that runs faster than natural ones.
