New Star Wars creature could be inspired by Skellig Michael puffins
The latest Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer has arrived and unveiled a lot of new things for fans all around the world.
Series regular Chewbacca is featured alongside a new creature known as a 'Porg' which is inspired by puffins on Skellig Michael.
The latest additions to the long-running franchise have had scenes filmed on the Skelligs, and the Porg is the latest Irish link in the series.
RTÉ Radio One's Ray D'Arcy show had verified Star Wars and Puffin fan Dr Mark Jessop, a marine biologist in UCC, to discuss the new creature.
The animal resembles puffins in size, however Dr. Jessop said that the sound of the Porg resembles the sound of a seabird rather than an actual puffin - which the radio host compared to the sound of a distant chainsaw.
’There’s quite a few thousand of them breeding on the Skelligs and that’s where they did a lot of the filming for Star Wars so it’s not really out of the universe that they’ve taken them as an inspiration for one of their new characters," he said.
The puffins arrive on the Skelligs in Spring to hatch their chicks.
Dr Jessop's work involves GPS tracking of puffins.
"They're an amazing thing. Those colourful beaks they have are pretty much only in the breeding season," he said.
The fictional puffin counterpart is described in-universe as "native to the planet Ahch-To, where Jedi Master Luke Skywalker made his exile in the years following the Battle of Endor."
