MIAMI: Scientists scouring the fields of Folsom, California found a new kind of black tarantula which they have named after Johnny Cash, the American music legend who sang of the jailhouse blues.

The eight-legged creature named Aphonopelma johnnycashi is all black, the way Cash often dressed when he strummed his guitar and sang songs like “The Man in Black” and “Folsom Prison Blues” in his bass-baritone voice.

“I’m a huge Johnny Cash fan,” said Chris Hamilton, lead author of the study in the journal ZooKeys which identified the tarantula as one of 14 new spider species discovered in the southwestern United States.

“But I didn’t go into this searching for something I could name after him,” he told AFP.

Instead, Hamilton along with researchers at Auburn University and Millsaps College sought to closely examine tarantulas found throughout the southern United States, west of the Mississippi River.