Unidan

About

Unidan is the Reddit handle of biologist Ben Eisenkop who is known for providing pertinent scientific information in Reddit threads regarding biology or ecology, often introducing himself with the declaration “biologist here!”

Online History

On September 23rd, 2009, Eisenkop created his Unidan Reddit account. On June 1st, 2010, Eisenkop submitted his first post on Reddit,^[7] featuring a giant water balloon popping in slow motion (shown below). The post was not well received, gathering 4 up votes and 5 down votes prior to being archived.

On September 23rd, 2010, Eisenkop posted his first comment with the declaration “biologist here” when describing the role of nipple stimulation in lactation on the /r/IAmA^[8] subreddit. On April 5th, 2012, Eisenkop posted a comment in the /r/pics^[9] subreddit explaining how pineapples can cause cracks on a tongue due to the presence of the enzyme bromelain, which received over 1,500 up votes prior to being archived. On June 14th, Unidan identified an organism in a photo posted to the /r/pics^[10] subreddit as a piure (shown below). Before it was archived, the comment gathered more than 6,000 up votes.

On August 4th, the /r/Unidanfans^[1] subreddit was created for discussions related to the popular Reddit biologist. On January 12th, 2013, Eisenkop provided tips on spotting sloths in Costa Rica in a post on the /r/pics^[11] subreddit, to which Redditor CrownRabbit responded that he tagged Unidan as “Most Useful Biology Here.” On April 25th, Unidan participated in an “ask me anything” (AMA) thread on the /r/IAmA^[13] subreddit, where he answered questions about his personal life and provided several biological science factoids. Before the post was archived, it received upwards of 13,000 up votes and 7,300 comments, making it the 6th most up voted /r/IAmA thread as of November 2013. On the following day, the tech news blog Mashable^[2] published an article on Eisenkop’s growing popularity on Reddit. On August 4th, a post about the Unidan Reddit account was submitted to the /r/MuseumOfReddit^[6] subreddit. On September 23rd, Eisenkop submitted a photo album to the /r/pics^[15] subreddit, containing photographs he had taken over the years as a field biologist (shown below). In the first month, the post received over 24,000 up votes and 1,700 comments.

On November 10th, Urban Dictionary^[12] user Cloicabforreal submitted an entry for Unidan, defining it as “a name given to anybody that is extremely knowledgable about a given subject.” On November 14th, The Daily Dot^[4] published an interview with Eisenkop,