When The Big Lebowski hit theaters 25 years in the past, it was a modest success, in the end raking in an estimated $46.7 million at the global box office. That’s considerably comprehensible. Though the Coen brothers had discovered success with films like Fargo and Raising Arizona, their clout was extra ancillary than precise. And the movie’s star, Jeff Bridges, regardless of being well-known most of his life, wasn’t what you’d name “bankable.” Over time, although, the movie has turn out to be the most effective type of cult traditional: the sort that evokes raucous showings at repertory cinemas in addition to conventions, religions, and right now’s vacation, Day of the Dude. 

The Big Lebowski additionally impressed one thing else: spider names. In 2006, evolutionist Ingi Agnarsson named two model new spider species—Anelosimus biglebowski and Anelosimus dude—after the film he says he watched with a buddy each different day in grad faculty. “Our life just became Big Lebowski quotes,” says Agnarsson. “We even watch it now when we meet up.”

When a scientist works as a taxonomist, Agnarsson explains, they will name species after just about something. “You never name things after yourself. That’s the unspoken rule,” he says, “but I’ve named species after people that I admire, like Nelson Mandela and the Obamas.” Sometimes, names are derived from the locations the place the species are discovered, and will incorporate some native language, however for Agnarsson’s crawlers, “I felt like I needed to honor this movie in some way. So that’s what I did.”

Part of a genus of spiders identified for his or her social conduct and big colonial cobwebs, A. biglebowski and A. dude have been collected in Tanzanian rainforests by Danish researcher Nikolaj Scharff, who then made them obtainable for Agnarsson to check as a part of his graduate analysis. (Scharff collected and shared them in 1998, however due to the taxonomic impediment, Agnarsson didn’t get them formally named till eight years later.) 

To date, solely about 50,000 spider species have been formally found and studied, although scientists estimate there are anyplace from 150,000 to 200,000 spider species worldwide. “Whenever I go into a tropical rainforest, about 70 percent of the spiders I see are new to science,” Agnarsson says. “It’s such an early age of discovery.” 

Agnarsson says that as of late, when attempting to find out whether or not a spider species is a brand new discovery, scientists will merely check their DNA. When he named A. biglebowski and A. dude, it wasn’t so easy. He needed to study the form of every centimeter-long spider—and specifically the spider’s genitalia—and examine it to all different identified Anelosimus bits. 

“We look at these tiny little structures and especially the male genitalia,” he says. “They have four pairs of walking legs, and then they have these little flimsy legs in front called pedipalps that are their sexual organs. Dude and biglebowski have sclerites that have different shapes. Dude has a couple of loops, and biglebowski has a couple more loops. That’s the only way anybody could ever tell the difference.”