Harrison Ford has earned the right to be curmudgeonly—but the 81-year-old star of so many iconic films is known for tempering his grouchiness with sly humor and heart. That came through 100 percent in a statement he shared after scientists discovered a new species of snake in Peru’s Otishi National Park and named it Tachymenoides harrisonfordi.
“The snake’s got eyes you can drown in, and he spends most of the day sunning himself by a pool of dirty water—we probably would’ve been friends in the early ‘60s,” the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny star said in a statement to Conservation International (via People), of which the actor serves as vice-chairman. “In all seriousness, this discovery is humbling. It’s a reminder that there’s still so much to learn about our wild world—and that humans are one small part of an impossibly vast biosphere. On this planet, all fates are intertwined, and right now, one million species are teetering on the edge of oblivion. We have an existential mandate to mend our broken relationship with nature and protect the places that sustain life.”
According to Conservation International, the discovery was made by a team from the U.S. and Peru led by Illinois Wesleyan University biology professor Edgar Lehr; the name came about because of Ford’s “decades-long environmental advocacy.” While the snake (“pale, yellowish-brown with scattered black blotches, a black belly, and a vertical streak over its copper-colored eye”) is thematically fitting given Indiana Jones’ well-known association with them, Ford has also had a spider (Calponia harrisonfordi) and an ant named after him (Pheidole harrisonfordi).
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