Anybody who has seen the new Star Wars trailer will have surely had their heart stolen by the adorable ‘porgs’ that are set to feature in the film.
The cute little creatures that appear in a dramatic scene in the ‘The Last Jedi’ trailer have an Irish connection.
Porgs are fictional creatures in the Star Wars universe, they are sea bird species native to the planet Ahch.
In real life they are based on a species of puffin that can be found on Skellig Michael.
The last two Star Wars movies have featured scenes shot at Skellig Michael and director Rian Johnson has revealed that the island’ puffins inspired the porgs.
He said: “If you go to Skellig at the right time of year, it’s just covered in puffins, and they’re the most adorable things in the world. So when I was first scouting there, I saw these guys, and I was like, oh, these are part of the island. And so the Porgs are in that realm.”
Since the trailer was released they have become an internet sensation and also being discussed on the offline media.
The Ray D’Arcy Show on RTÉ Radio 1 invited UCC marine biologist Dr Mark Jessop to talk about porgs and the puffins that inspired them.
Dr Jessop said: “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.”
Take a look at the trailer below.