“ ZOT Account, ZOT Link, ZOT Mail… Why everyone is using ZOT in front of every word here?”

As a new international student at UCI, this was one of the very first questions that I had in my mind. “What is “ZOT”? “Why does almost every email starts with “Hi Anteaters!” and ends with ‘ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!’?” Believe it or not, as an international student, I sometimes wonder about very simple questions like this and have been too shy to ask anyone! But thanks to my very good search engine friend “Google” I’ve fortunately been able to find answers quickly.

As you may already know the anteater is the mascot of UCI and the celebrity mascot of UCI is called Peter (here in this link you can find more information about Peter, the anteater, and his history and makeovers: http://uci.edu/peter/). Despite some disagreements upon its selection between members of the campus, Anteater was officially chosen as the mascot of UCI on November 30, 1965 and the student body of UCI supported it all the way for all these 40 years. Therefore, when administration emails are sent to students, they address them as “Anteaters”, referring to the fact that they are all anteaters of UCI!!! In addition, names of a lot of places or organizations on campus start with Anteater, such as: “Anteater Recreation Center (ARC)”, “Anteater Express”, etc. Inspired by Johnny Hart’s comic strip, ”ZOT” the cry that an anteater makes when attacking its prey, became the campus official battle cry afterward as well. Therefore, names of some resources on UCI’s campus or links on UCI’s websites start with “ZOT”, such as “ZOT Account”, “ZOT Link”, “ZOT Portal”, “ZOT Mail”, etc.

I was so glad to find the reasons behind the selection of Anteater as the mascot of UCI and the reasons of using ZOT in the emails and campus-related names. I am really glad that I could share my results with you here as well. Hope you anteaters liked reading this post and don’t wonder what is ZOT anymore. 🙂

Thank you!

ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!