The designer, Edie Freedman, noticed that UNIX programs had these really weird names like sed and awk, which got her thinking ofanimals with odd names, like yaks, llamas and geckos.
And that whole system reminds us so much of a situation in which humans use names that we were really curious to see whether these animals really do recognize the actual shape of that whistle as carrying the information of identity.
The list of sponsors included some of the biggest names in animal rights activism: the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment ofAnimals, Farm Sanctuary and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.