A new species of peculiarly shaped spider has been named after the owner of the Hogwarts Sorting Hat.
‘Eriovixia Gryffindori’ is a newly discovered species of spider, found in India, which bears a strong resemblance to the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter films. Photo: Javed Ahmed / Indian Journal of Arachnology
It’s almost as if the Sorting Hat apparated to a forest in southern India where it was transfigured into a spider. The spider was discovered the Kans forests of central Western Ghats, Karnataka, researchers report in a paper published in the Indian Journal of Arachnology.
The newly discovered spider species Eriovixia gryffindori bears an uncanny resemblance to the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter films.
In profile, the spider bears an uncanny resemblance to the Hogwarts sorting hat as depicted in the Harry Potter franchise films.
The spider has been named ‘Eriovixia gryffindori’, after Godric Gryffindor, the character who originally owned the Sorting Hat.
In a section in the paper on the etymological reasoning for the new spider’s name, the authors wrote: “This uniquely shaped spider derives its name from the fabulous, sentient magical artefact, the sorting hat, owned by the (fictitious) medieval wizard Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
“Eriovixia gryffindori is nocturnal and during daylight hours its shape and colouring give it camouflage to blend in with dead, dry foliage.
The curious shape of E. gryffindori, which is only 7 mm (3/16″) in length, allows the spider to camouflage itself among the thick vegetation in the Western Ghats mountains, stretching for about 990 miles along India’s western coast.
The mountain range is home to a wide array of the country’s species and is recognized as one of the world’s eight “hottest hotspots” of biological diversity, according to UNESCO. But they have been threatened by the coffee, tea, rubber and oil palm industries or have been logged, reported Earth Touch News Network.
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