Researchers Invoke Cthulhu In Naming Two New Microorganisms

Apparently there are some Lovecraft enthusiasts among the biologist community. A team of scientists at the University of British Columbia and the University of Florida have dubbed two symbiotic protists as Cthulhu and Cthylla.

Your first guess as to why is probably right, it's because they have a lot of tentacles, or at least, tentacle looking appendages.

The researchers describe the two in the abstract of their paper published in PLOS One, saying, "Both genera have [...] an anterior bundle flagella (and likely a single posterior flagellum) that emerge slightly subanteriorly and have a distinctive beat pattern. Cthulhu is relatively large and has a distinctive bundle of over 20 flagella whereas Cthylla is smaller, has only 5 anterior flagella."

In case you were thinking that such a name befits a more... otherworldly creature, the Cthulhu and Cthylla are in fact pretty strange. The microorganisms symbiotically live inside of the stomachs of termites, and help them to digest the cellulose in wood. That's perhaps not as fantastical as a cosmic deity slumbering in the underwater city of R'lyeh, but it's still sort of interesting.

Cthulhu first appeared in H.P Lovecraft's short story, The Call of Cthulhu. He belongs to a race of god-like beings known as the Great Old Ones, and has since become the centerpiece, or at least a mascot of sorts, for the entire Lovecraftian universe.

The lesser known entity of Cthylla was conceived by Brian Lumley, and not H.P. Lovecraft, and first appeared in the 1975 novel The Transition Of Titus Crow. Tina L. Jens later described the Great Old One as a huge, winged octopus in her own story, In His Daughter's Darkling Womb. If you have an interest in the larger Cthulhu Mythos, Cthylla is Cthulhu's youngest offspring, and is prophesized to give birth to the god again after he is destroyed.