Octospora humosa was an obscure spore-shooting fungus, living quietly in patches of moss. Then the Guardian included it in a species-renaming competition, and a 12-year old girl beat 5,000 other entrants by dubbing the fungus "hotlips."
Brotherton said he hoped the popular competition, now in its second year, would draw people into the natural world and get them looking for these unheralded species, which include the largest sea squirt in Britain, a lichen that thinks it is a mushroom and a sea slug that recycles stings.
The judges thought the name particularly apt, since Octospora is a member of the discomycetes group; the renaming thus creates a "hotlips disco."
Link. Photo credit: Thomas Læssøe/MycoKey/Natural England
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I was once interested in robotics, but dude, get the f*** outta here, I'll start digging on this today!
Who knows, maybe that's my job in the future :)
And the Java program is actually downloadable here: http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/teddy/teddy.htm