Reidar Hahn/Fermilab

Just weeks after the public voted overwhelmingly to name a new UK research vessel Boaty McBoatface, the US particle-physics facility Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, asked people on Twitter to name a bison that was born on its grassy grounds on 26 April.

What would you call our new baby bison? Tweet us with #BisonNaming. Please, no Bison McBisonface. pic.twitter.com/EkIWTXIc7F — Fermilab (@Fermilab) April 27, 2016

The science world stepped up with a flood of responses — about 260 in the first day. Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, offered:

Other ideas included

(a play on Enrico Fermi, who discovered many radioactive isotopes)

Fermilab is surrounded by a large tract of reconstructed grassland and has hosted a herd of bison there since 1969. But there is a catch in the naming competition: the lab doesn’t actually intend to saddle the calf with a name, says Fermilab communication specialist Lauren Biron, who posted the initial Fermilab tweet. She says her call for suggestions was simply a fun way to connect with the lab’s Twitter followers.

They did not disappoint. Matt Dozier, a digital content specialist at the US Department of Energy, was the first to suggest Freeman Bison as an homage to the eminent theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson:

@fermilab Freeman Bison has to be a strong candidate, surely? — Matt Dozier (@mattdozier) April 27, 2016

Some respondents put their knowledge of physics to work in another way. Jeffrey Warren, a science adviser for the North Carolina state Senate in Raleigh, tweeted:

.@Fermilab I don't care what the final results of #BisonNaming are, just as long as you keep the herd in a unified field. — Jeffrey Warren, PhD (@DrJeffWarren) April 28, 2016

Biron first thought about bison names when a calf was born to the Fermilab herd last year. “I came up with ‘Neil EatdeGrasse Bison’,” she says. But since the lab does not name its animals, the moniker did not catch on. “We don’t have a long history of naming contests at Fermilab,” she says.

As Biron tweeted to one respondent: