Animals Researchers name flatworm after Abba

Researchers have named a flatworm found on Svalbard after the pop group Abba. They wanted to express their admiration for the music of the Swedish cult band, according to the National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

They also wanted to mark the 50th anniversary of "the magical evening in Brighton" in 1974, explained the researcher in charge, Chahinez Bouguerche. Back then, Abba had won the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Waterloo" and thus heralded a global career.

Bouguerche had also listened to the music of her favorite band while creating the drawings of the parasitic worm that lived in a fish. So she ultimately decided to honor the pop group in this way. The new species, which was discovered on the northern Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen (Svalbard), thus bears the Latin name Derogenes abba.