Google Doodle celebrates Leap Day 2020 with quirky illustration

GOOGLE Doodle is where Google makes fun, spontaneous changes to its logo to celebrate special holidays and famous people's birthday.

And today of all days they leapt right in with an animated logo to commemorate 2020's Leap Day.

Why is Google celebrating Leap Day 2020?

Google Doodle is celebrating Leap Day 2020 as the day only comes around once every four years, with the last one being in 2016.

In 2016, Google celebrated the day with a logo of hopping bunnies by artist Olivia Huynh.

Google Doodle has made a jumping logo for Leap Day 2020.

This is further illustrated with Google Doodle's home page saying, "We HOP you have a good one—Happy Leap Day!"

When is the 2020 Leap Day?

The 2020 Leap Day falls on Saturday, February 29, 2020.

The day of a Leap Day will always vary, but the date, February 29, will always stay the same.

For example, the Leap Day in 2016 fell on Monday, February 29.

If you were born on the rare day, your birthday will be listed as February 29, but you will have to celebrate it on February 28 or March 1, until the next Leap Year comes around.

What is a Leap Year?

A Leap Year is a year where one extra day is added to our calendars, making it 366 days in total, rather than the usual 365 days.

This isn't done for fun, there is an actual reason for this extra date.

The Leap Day is added on to the month of February, seeing as it is the shortest month of the year.

We have to have a Leap Year to keep our calendar in sync with the Earth’s rotation around the Sun, if this didn't happen, "we'd be out of sync by about 6 hours a year".

It takes the Earth 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds to circle once around the Sun, so an extra day is added every four years.

There are some rules when it comes to Leap Years though, they must be able to be evenly divided by four, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100.

What is a Google Doodle?

In 1998, Google founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google to show they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.

The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.

Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.

In 2020 so far they've had Doodles Scottish astrophysicist genius Mary Somerville and Aids activist Nkosi Johnson, who died aged 12.