"Late Show" host Stephen Colbert has made it no secret that he is a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy series set in Middle-earth. Therefore, he was more than just a little upset when he heard of the news that scientists in Brazil discovered a new species of daddy long legs spider and officially named the cave-dwelling creature Iandumoema smeagol, after a character from “The Lord of The Rings.”
Unfortunately for those scientists, they got their characters just a tiny bit mixed up. You see, as Colbert was only happy to explain in detail, Smeagol was not a cave-dwelling creature that shied away from sunlight, like the scientists affectionately described their precious find.
Smeagol was the name of the friendly Hobbit who became corrupted by the One Ring and turned into the monstrous Gollum – who then hid away in a cave.
"You should have named the spider Gollum. You don't discover a venomous snake and name it Anakin. You name it Darth Vader," Colbert schooled the scientists during Friday night's episode of "The Late Show."
According to the study published by the scientists themselves, they are perfectly aware of Tolkien lore and the difference between Smeagol and Gollum.
"The specific epithet refers to the hobbit named Smeagol, created by J.R.R. Tolkien, being the original name of Gollum –- the dweller of the caves located below the Misty Mountains of Middle-earth of the Lord of the Rings book," according to the study.
Howevever, they did not explain why they opted to name the newly discovered blind harvestman spider after Smeagol. Perhaps the scientists thought that the name Iandumoema smeagol had a better ring to it than Iandumoema gollum?
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