Science-named Pets

This week I posted a video about a viewer in Norway who named her pet rabbit "Buckyball".

Small, round, black - it seems an appropriate name for a chemistry fan. 

Buckyball (rabbit)



The 16-year-old owner, named Izabelle, told us that Buckyball was expecting babies and was after more science-themed names.

Since then, viewers of our chemistry videos have been suggesting plenty of options. And feel free to suggest more here on the blog, etc.

However I've since cast my net wider and been asking people to share more pets who have science-inspired names.

Here are a few that have caught my eye:

Neil deGrasse Tyson (boxer dog) 



Jayden from New Zealand told me his family adopted this dog because his owners were fleeing Christchurch after the first big earthquake.

Apparently he was in poor condition and underweight, but he's since back to full fitness.

Jayden's family wanted to call the dog Tyson...

But Jayden only agreed on the condition the dog's official name was Neil deGrasse Tyson, the American astrophysicist and science communicator.

Dubnium-Dysprosium (centipede)



A Swiss physicist named Maja sent me this rather alarming picture of a pet centipede named after two of the lesser-known elements on the periodic table.

Maja said she chose the name because: "I thought it sounded special."

But apparently Maja's mother preferred to call the creature "Alejandro" because it was easier to pronounce and was from a popular Lady Gaga song?!

Dubnium-Dysprosium died of old age last September.

Niels (cockatiel) 



Twitter user paradoxosaurus shared a picture of his cockatiel named Niels.

The bird's named after the late, great Danish scientist Neils Bohr.

We can now add the bird-naming to Bohr's impressive list of honours which also included the Nobel Prize.