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Science & Medicine
What’s in a (Scientific) Name?
From a lone example of a trilobite in Hunan, China named Han solo to a butterfly pea flower, reminiscent of a Georgia O’Keefe painting, called Clitoria ternatea, the naming of species offers almost as much in the way of entertainment as it does scientific classification. The animals we call by a single name, like horses, actually have a two-part name, Equus caballas. The official rules for naming species, set down by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, are surprisingly simple. Scientific names must be spelled with the Latin alphabet and cannot be overtly offensive. That’s basically it. The name can even be a nonsense string of arbitrary letters. In contrast, the naming of astronomical bodies (planets, stars, asteroids, etc.) is overseen by committees in accordance with strict naming conventions. While there is an enormous wealth of fascinating names to report on, from plants to drugs to telescopes, we’ll confine ourselves to animals this time.
For as long as we have had records, and probably longer, mankind has sought to classify the world around us in an effort to understand it. This is called taxonomy, the study of the general principles of scientific classification, from the Greek words for “order” or “arrangement” and “science.” Three centuries before the common era, Aristotle grouped animals first by similarities, like where they live, and then hierarchically, with humans naturally at the top. Not every animal fit well into that system. Ducks posed a particular problem, as they had an annoying habit of living in water, on the land, and spending time in the air. It would be 1800 years before another “natural philosopher,” as scientists were called, would try his hand—Andrea Cesalpino, an Italian physician and botanist, sorted plants by the structure of their fruits and seeds. The first scientist to use a binomial, or two-name, system that we would recognize was Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin, who grouped some six thousand plants by genus and species in 1623.
There were several inconsistent and sometimes conflicting systems of classification in use when Carl Linnaeus wrote his influential Systema Naturae in 1735, laying down the system we use to this day. Linnaeus was the first taxonomist to list humans as a primate, though he did also classify whales as fish. All living things were sorted into kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. A house cat, for example, is in kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata (meaning it has a spinal cord), class Mammalia, order Carnivora, family Felidae, genus Felis, and species catus. A lion diverges from a house cat at genus Panthera (which awesomely means “reaper of all”); its species leo gives it the scientific name Panthera leo. This system can be visualized as an enormous branching tree, with its trunk being broad and its branches becoming increasingly specific.
We still name some animals according to their appearance, with a little poetic license thrown in for good measure. The tiniest and most pastel of the armored mammals is the pink fairy armadillo. As advertised, the star-nosed mole has a burst of delicate sensory tendrils on the tip of its snout. Osexax mucofloris is an unappealing worm who lives off the bones of dead whales, which would explain its name “bone-eating snot-flower.” A bacterium that was taken to the international space station and exposed to cosmic radiation earned the Latin name for “traveler of the void.” Central and Eastern areas of the US boast a salamander species that can grow to a whopping two and a half feet long called the hellbender. The internet’s favorite ichthus, which can’t maintain its body shape out of water and collapses into a rather dour-looking puddle, is the blob fish.
Even with the Linnaean taxonomy in place, we still call some animals things that they simply are not. We all know that a seahorse isn’t a horse and koala bears aren’t bears, but most people don’t realize that a jackrabbit isn’t a rabbit but a hare. Both animals come from the Leporidae family, but part ways when it comes to genus. Hares tend to live alone and not in burrows, and their young are born sighted with full coats of fur. Jackrabbits get their name from have exceptionally long ears, like a donkey or jackass. If you have ever found yourself watching Go! Diego, Go! after your preschooler has left the room, you’ve probably seen the lanky maned wolf. It should come as no surprise that this awkward-looking creature isn’t from the genus Canis, like gray wolves, jackals, and dogs, but has the genus Chrysocyon all to itself. Red pandas are pandas, but giant pandas are not. Take a moment with that one. The adorable raccoon-like Ailurus fulgens were the first to be called “panda,” which is believed to derive from the Nepali word ponya. When the black and white Ailuropoda melanoleuca were discovered later, it was assumed that the two species were related, so they were dubbed “giant pandas.” They are from the family Ursidae, which includes all bears, but the giant panda is the only living species in its genus. What Americans call a buffalo is actually a bison by genus, whereas the cape buffalo from Africa and the water buffalo from Asia are not even in the same genus as each other.
The slimy hellbender.
Never let it be said that scientists have no sense of humor. Slime mold is the primary food for a beetle discovered in 2004, so their genus was labeled Gelae, pronounced “jelly.” The species are Gelae baen, Gelae belae, Gelae donut, Gelae fish, and Gelae rol. There are beetles of the Agra genus named Agra phobia and Agra vation. There’s a wasp whose genus is Heerz and species is lukenatcha. A species of tiny mollusk is called ittibitium, a parrot is named Vini vidivici, a water beetle is Ytu brutus, a syrphid fly is called Ohmyia omya, and there is the Pacific island snail Ba humbugi.
Scientists are more than the stereotype of stuffy old men in thick glasses and lab coats, poring over dry data sets. They’re people, with interests and hobbies outside their work. When arachnologist Peter Jager discovered a new species of spider in Malaysia that was covered with flamboyant red, orange, and yellow hair, he could think of no better name than Heteropoda davidbowie. A frog, two types of flies, and an isopod found near Zanzibar have been named after Freddie Mercury. A species of horsefly with a conspicuous hind end was name Scaptia beyonceae. Likewise, a mustache-shaped pattern on a Cameroonian spider earned it the name Pachygnatha zappa, after rock legend Frank Zappa. The pistol shrimp Synalpheaus pinkfloydi makes a noise louder than a rock concert at over two hundred decibels, simply by snapping its one oversized claw shut. The gall wasps have left the building, at least if they are the variety Preseucoila imallshookupis. The wasp Metallichneumon neurospastarchus’s genus honors the band Metallica while its species, neurospastarchus, Greek for “master of puppets,” alludes to the weak and mindless nature of its hosts.
The pistol shrimp.
Actors get naming nods, too. Dominic Monaghan has a one-centimeter ginger spider named for him, Ctenus monaghani, after it was discovered during the filming of the nature documentary he hosted, Wild Things. After “shamelessly begging on national television” to have something named after him, late-night host and satirist, Stephen Colbert became namesake to a dune-dwelling spider in Southern California, Aptostichus stephencolberti. A fluffy lemur on the island of Madagascar shares its name with fierce creature and Monty Python John Cleese, Avahi cleesei. The hosts of Top Gear each have a wasp in the genus Kerevata named after them: clarksoni, hammondi, and jamesmayi.
Former First Lady of Argentina and well-traveled corpse Eva Peron has a moth named for her whose scientific name is simply evita. A single genus of fish honors Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Teddy Roosevelt. The neck plate of a leaf-dwelling Madagascan praying mantis earned it the name Ilomantis ginsburgae, in honor of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sirindhorn, the second daughter of the monarch of Thailand, commonly referred to as “princess angel” has been honored with a number of plants, several crustaceans, a butterfly, a bee, and a prehistoric tarsier. Similarly, Barack Obama’s name was stamped on several spider species, a few different fish, a blood fluke, bird, lichen,
