Google Leap Day Doodle Celebrates Composer Giochino Rossini

Google has revealed its latest homepage doodle, celebrating composer Gioachino Rossini's 220th birthday along with Leap Day, and with a distinctly froggy theme. The composer – who was born on February 29, 1792 – is best known for the opera The Barber of Seville, depicted in Google's doodle as being performed by a selection of leaping frogs.

The frog connection is an obvious link to the "leap" year, where February gets an extra day tagged on every four years so as to accommodate the actual time it takes for the Earth to fully revolve around the sun. That actually lasts six hours longer than the regular 365 day year, and every four years they accumulated time is wrapped up into a 366th day.

According to the Washington Post, however, the frog theme may be even deeper than that. They point out that Chuck Jones' Warner Bros. cartoon One Froggy Evening features a singing and dancing frog that just so happens to perform the Figaro aria from The Barber of Seville.

The doodle is the handiwork of Ryan Germick, who was also responsible for the PAC-MAN doodle back in May 2010. That was so popular that Google granted it a permanent reprieve, rather than taking it down after the traditional 24 hours.

Update: Google has shared a behind-the-scenes look at the Doodle team process: