New Species Of Millipede Named After Taylor Swift

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

New Species Of Millipede Named After Taylor Swift

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Taylor Swift has won just about every award and honor that the music business has to offer, and now she’s getting all sorts of honors that nobody really imagined before. For instance: There’s now a newly discovered species of millipede named after the singer. Phys.org reports that scientists have discovered 16 new species of millipede in the Appalachian mountains and that one of them is named Nannaria swiftae in honor of the lady who sang “Shake It Off.”

A team of scientists from Virginia Tech has recently been studying different millipedes throughout the eastern US, and they announced the existence of 16 species in a recent paper. Scientists have long suspected that there were more species of millipedes than they had officially logged, and this paper makes it official. Derek Hennen, the study’s lead author, named one of those species after his wife, and he named another after Swift because he’s a big fan: “Her music helped me get through the highs and lows of graduate school, so naming a new millipede species after her is my way of saying thanks.”

Nannaria swiftae is reportedly native to Tennessee, one of the states where Swift has lived. For pun-related purposes, I tried to Google for any Taylor Swift songs, or even lines, about bugs, but I don’t think there are any. Swift was, however, once responsible for knocking praying mantis pods off of the trees at her family’s Christmas tree farm, and she also has a dog named bug. Also, millipedes aren’t remotely related to snakes, so she’s probably relieved about that. That’s, uh, yeah. That’s all I got. Maybe you can do better in the comments section.

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