GQ is a proudly pro-Porg publication. Sure, some of us want to pet them and some of us want to eat them—but either way, we like them.

But what do we actually know about the Porgs? Despite Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s two hour and 33 minute runtime, the amount of concrete information we get on the Porgs is vanishingly small. They live on Luke Skywalker’s weird little Jedi island, they make annoying little squeaks, and they get all weepy if you roast one of their siblings over a fire. But where do they come from, anyway?

Now we know. In an interview with StarWars.com, creature concept designer Jake Lunt Davies reveals that the Porgs were only invented to cover up the actual adorable creatures that turned out to be a huge pain in the ass for writer/director Rian Johnson. Skellig Michael, the Irish Island on which the Luke Skywalker scenes were shot, is a wildlife preserve that pays home to "hundreds" of puffins—squat little birds that bear a not-inconsiderable resemblance to Porgs. And by law, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was not permitted to mess with the puffins.

"From what I gathered, Rian, in a positive spin on this, was looking at how can he work with this," explains Davies. "You can’t remove them. You physically can’t get rid of them. And digitally removing them is an issue and a lot of work, so let’s just roll with it, play with it. And so I think he thought, 'Well, that’s great, let’s have our own indigenous species.'"

Davies goes on to explain that the final creature design for Porgs stemmed from Rian Johnson’s vague request for "puffin people," which he somehow interpreted as "so cute Lisa Frank will be pissed she didn’t invent it first."

If you want to know way, way more about Porgs than any rational person should care about, click on over to StarWars.com.