Biological Names Used in Computer Science

Jun 27, 2019 · 2 mins read

Once one of my biology teachers (boma Mizan :p ) said that biological names are used everywhere in technology. I suddenly recalled that memory and now I’m making a list of every biological name used in technology.

Amazon: Amazon is a rainforest in South America. Amazon is an American company focusing on e-commerce.
Anaconda: Anaconda is a snake. Anaconda is a free and open-source distribution of the Python programming language for scientific computation.
Apple: Apple is a fruit. Apple is an American tech company.
Bug: Bug is a kind of insect. Bug is an error that occurs in software.
Cat: Cat is a meow. Cat is a Linux program to concatenate multiple files (The name actually comes from concatenating though)
Cucumber: Cucumber is a fruit. Cucumber is a software testing tool that supports behavior-driven development.
Python: Python is a snake. Python is a popular programming language.
Gopher: Gopher is a kind of rodent. Gopher is a TCP/IP application layer protocol. Also, Google has developed a programming language called Go whose mascot is a Gopher.
Hydra: Hydra is a fresh-water organism. Hydra is a brute force password cracker.
Leaf: Leaf is a flat blade-like structure of a plant. Leaf is a node of a Tree data structure.
Mouse: Mouse is a kind rodent. Mouse is an input device for controlling the cursor of a computer.
Neuron: Neuron is a nerve cell. Neuron is the basic unit of a neural network which is used in machine learning.
Raspberry Pi: Raspberry is a fruit. Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer.
RAT: Rat is a kind of rodent. RAT is a Remote Acess Trojan which is used as a backdoor to access PCs without a victim’s knowledge.
Shell: Shell is a hard outer covering of some marine animals. Shell is a program that communicates with the operating system of a computer.
Spyder: Spider is an insect. Spyder is a platform for scientific programming in Python.
Tardigrade: Tardigrade is the most resilient known micro animal which can survive in the most extreme conditions. Project Tardigrade is a research project led by Microsoft which aims to achieve fault resilient servers, just like a Tardigrade.
Tree: Tree is a perennial plant. Tree is a data structure (a structure to keep data organized).
Virus: Virus is a microscopic parasite. Virus is a type of malicious software that can spread itself.
Web: Web is a spide house. Web is the internet.
Worm: Worm is a cylindrical animal. Worm is a type of malware that spreads copies of itself from computer to computer.

I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more out there. Help me expand this list by commenting down below.