I love weird or funny species names, but I’ve recently noticed how many of them are actually named after other animals or plants. I suppose some of them are named that way because of a connection between the species, like an anteater eats ants, or a horseweed is eaten by horses??, but lots seem to …

A few of my favorites are: Peacock Mantis Shrimp, which is neither a peacock, nor a mantis, nor a true shrimp (Decapoda) Delightful Bird Dropping Moth, named for being pretty and looking like bird poop Laurel Sphinx Moth, incorrectly named after Laurel the plant- the moth was named Sphinx kalmiae …

Striped tiger butterfly (or plain tiger or blue tiger or white tiger, etc etc) pretty silly names if you think about it hehe

If you enjoy silly Latin names in general, this website is a great collection of hundreds of the oddest ones: https://www.curioustaxonomy.net/ They include real names like Apopyllus now; the genus Gelae (pronounced “jelly”), which includes Gelae baen, Gelae belae, Gelae donut, Gelae fish, Gelae ro…

[image] paul_dennehy: Peacock Mantis Shrimp There are also the Peacock spiders , including the Sparklemuffin Peacock Spider , which is one of my friend’s favorite spiders.

wolf spiders (LYCOsidae) have a lot of genus names referring to larger predators, including LYCosa (wolf), TIGRosa (tiger), PARDosa (panther), ARCtosa (bear), ALOPECosa (fox), CROCODILosa (… this one’s fairly obvious!) one of my favorite animals is an antlion, family myrmeleontidae (myrme = ant, le…

I like the European attempts to make sense of Australian birds. Australian Magpie - not a magpie. Australian robins aren’t robins. Buttonquails - not quails. Scrub Tits - not tits. Speckled Warblers - not warblers. Heathwrens, Scrubwrens, Fairywrens - not wrens. Emu Wrens - Neither emus nor wrens. Q…

Not exactly funny, but I recently learned something new: the ailanthus moth (very pretty, orange, slender moth) is native to North America. However, the ailanthus, aka the tree-of-heaven, is an infamous invasive species here in the US. What happened was that the native moths adapted to the non-nati…

All extant “penguins” (I call them sphenicids to sound smarter and be more accurate) are allegedly named after the penguin, a species of extinct Great auk . People knew about both taxa for a long time, but from what I’ve heard the term was applied to the Great auk before sphenicids got the name. Corr…

Fun species named after other species

Nature Talk

tcriley January 13, 2026, 5:36pm 3

One I saw on my recent road trip to Las Vegas: Tree cholla! A cactus that looks similar to a tree or shrub.

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Fun species named after other species

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