This article originally appeared on Global Nerdy.
After winning the auction for the Free Software Foundation plush gnu, I hung out in the hotel lobby, checking my email. I talked with some passers-by, and occasionally Richard Stallman, who sat at the couch across from me, cracked the occasional (and very painful) pun.
In these conversations, I was approached by no less than three people who asked me if the gnu – the animal mascot of the Free Software Foundation — was a real creature or a mythical one.
Doesn’t anyone watch Animal Planet, nature shows or The Great Space Coaster (starring Gary Gnu) anymore?
They’re real. Here’s the first line of their Wikipedia entry:
The wildebeest (plural wildebeest or wildebeests), also called the gnu (/gəˈnuː/ or /ˈnjuː/), is an antelope of the genus Connochaetes. It is a hooved (ungulate) mammal.
Maybe it’s time to organize a bus trip of geeks so that we can all go to the zoo.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I knew what a wildebeest was, I just didn’t know it was also called a gnu =(
Guillaume Theoret: That’s okay, Guillame: the other two didn’t even know what a wildebeest was. Those were the ones I was worried about.
Maybe they didn’t watch that scene in The Lion King.
It looks a bit like a skinny ox. 2009 must be the year of the Linux Desktop!
Happy GNU year!
Or the Lion King! I would have figured Disney would have indoctrinated everyone.
Wow, now that i think back, that was an intense kids movie. One of the best.
I can’t believe it was GNU that helped killed Mufasa :L
I suppose I can blame Gary Gnu for my love of both bad puns and geeks.
This long and still no Flanders and Swann reference?