John Cleese has Species of Lemur Named for Him

Wow. Imagine being able to say "they named a small, clever primate after me." (And not having it be some lame baby or something.)

That Monty Python snake didn't work out. But thanks to his tongue-in-cheek love for lemurs--and his real-life interest in animal conservation--John Cleese has secured a place in the annals of science.

Cleese, who played a lemur-happy zookeeper in the 1997 film Fierce Creatures and hosted 1998 documentary Born to Be Wild: Operation Lemur with John Cleese, the comic now has a new species of the primate named after him.

Researches at Zurich University have dubbed a tiny, leaf-loving lemur in Madagascar the avahi cleesei.