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Hogwarts Would Have Shut Down In Year One If The Sorting Hat Was This Newly Discovered Spider

by: Uproxx authors

Picture this. It’s your first day at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You don’t come from a wizarding family, but you’ve been filled in a bit about what to expect from your classmates. You’ve already boarded the Hogwarts Express and next you’ll be escorted across the Black Lake by the Keeper of Keys and Grounds where you’ll spot the castle for the very first time. Finally, you enter the Great Hall and wait to be called in alphabetical order. Your last name begins with an “A” so you’re first. You sit down on a wooden stool waiting for the famed “Sorting Hat” to place you in your proper house. There’s just one thing: no one told you the hat was really a spider. You immediately run out of the Great Hall, back to the Hogwarts Express, and demand they take you home as the Sorting Hat yells after you, “Why are you screaming? Where are you going? I’M JUST TRYING TO SORT YOU!”

Annnnnd scene.

I just found out a spider species was discovered and named after Godric Gryffindor. Why? It literally looks just like his old hat. I’m horrified.

Eriovixia gryffindori is its proper name and its described as a “new species of cryptic, dry-foliage mimicking araneid” in a new paper in the Indian Journal of Arachnology from Javed Ahmed, Rajashree Khalap, and Sumukha J. N. It was found in the “Kans” forest of central Western Ghats, Karnataka, India.

This uniquely shaped spider derives its name from the fabulous, sentient magical artifact, the sorting hat, owned by the (fictitious) medieval wizard Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and stemming from the powerful imagination of Ms. J. K. Rowling, wordsmith extraordinaire, as presented in her beloved series of books, featuring everyone’s favorite boy-wizard, Harry Potter. An ode from the authors, for magic lost, and found, in an effort to draw attention to the fascinating, but oft overlooked
world of invertebrates, and their secret lives.

And, of course, Ahmed shared it with Rowling via Twitter:

Rowling replied saying she was “truly honoured” and added the appropriate #FantasticBeasts hashtag.

I may not like spiders, but it is always fun to see magical creatures in the real world.

(Via The Verge)