Showing posts with label Bugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bugs. Show all posts

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Species named after celebrities

Just for laughs you can check out this site which has 9 examples of species named after celebrities. They have some good ones such as a rabbit named after Hugh Hefner, slime mold beetles named after members of the Bush administration, and flies named after Bill Gates and Paul Allen. There is even a blind cave bug named after Hitler that is facing extinction because of collectors. In fact there is a long history of bugs being named after people to insult them. The most famous story is in the "19th century, when entomologists Mr. Chase and Mr. Dyar were engaged in a collecting war. When Mr. Chase found a liparid moth, he named it "in honour" of his rival: The moth is now known as Dyaria, and a target of scatological fetishists everywhere.". Not to mention all the rock bands: "A team of palaeontologists with poor music tastes named a Madagascan dinosaur masiakasaurus knopfleri, after Dire Straits singer Mark Knopfler. There is Bufonaria borisbeckeri (a marine snail), Hyla stingi (a Colombian tree frog) and a wasp called Polemistus Chewbacca. In 1994, a fossil chaoborid fly was named "I", until a researcher pointed out that he didn't want to keep writing "I have small male genitalia." (it was changed to Iyaiyai). There's even another hitleri - a paleodictyoptera (flying insect fossil) named in 1934."


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