Cincinnati Zoo Gives Batman-Themed Names To Painted Dog Puppies

Move over, Ace the Bat-Hound. You've got some competition.

That's because the Cincinatti Zoo has just announced that a littler of painted dog puppies living at the zoo will be named after characters from the Batman mythos.

"And the names of the painted dog puppies are Riddler, Bruce, Alfred, Hugo, Luke and Oswald for our six boys. Lucy, Quinn, Selina and Ivy are the four little ladies," Dana Burke wrote to the zoo's official blog. "If you didn't catch the theme here, it's Batman (don't worry, I wasn't that familiar with it either). Some are characters from the show, a couple from the comics, some from the motion pictures and others from the animated series. It all started when the one puppy we could distinguish from all of the others had an upside down white question mark on his back. This one clearly had to be called Riddler. The rest just followed."

You can check out a video of the puppies below.

While Luke and Lucy do have roots in the Batman mythos, that wasn't the primary reason they were used; Burke says it's the name of the first pair of African painted dogs she ever worked with.

...Well, they've got the ears for the Batman theme.