https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/68918-Poecilanthrax-lucifer This little bugger from the bee fly family surprised me with the name it was given when I observed it for the first time recently. I suppose the original observer (Johan Christian Fabricius) either particularly disliked bees, flies, or perhaps both. And it’s the second devil-related name in this thread!
3 Likes
The Redhorse Sucker is pretty funny.
3 Likes
My friend just told me about Eremobates inyoanus; cue the Beavis and Butt-head laughter.
7 Likes
They could’ve used the epithet *inyoensis * but I suspect they had an ulterior motive. Theirs is funnier.
3 Likes
Johan Christian Fabricius would have had a Classical education and likely employed lucifer as a reference to the planet Venus or to mean something like “light-bringer”, not as a reference to Satan.
6 Likes
May I say employing Lucifer is a crazy thing. 
4 Likes
On the other hand, there is the moth Copiopteryx jehovah. From what I’ve read, its name was controversial at the time.
3 Likes
Sure. But Jehovah is a 16th Century transliteration of the Hebrew word for God. It means only one thing. Lucifer is a Latin word with a number of related translations that have nothing to do with Satan. The Latin word is, for example, the root of the name for the group of enzymes luciferase, without which fireflies would have no fire.
A bee fly with Lucifer in its name is still going to raise the odd eyebrow, whatever the actual context Fabricius had in mind, Lucifer being Lucifer and all. I just think that Fabricius was using a Latin word in a Latin name.
4 Likes
I just used “search this topic,” and surprisingly, no mention of Bufflehead. Which sounds like a Dr. Seuss animal.
2 Likes
Recently came across a Dragonfly - Libellula incesta. Gotta wonder what was going through their mind when that was named.
1 Like
“According to the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Vogon poetry is the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria, and the worst is by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex, who perished along with her poetry during the destruction of Earth, ironically caused by the Vogons themselves. Vogon poetry is seen as mild by comparison.”
5 Likes
“A Checklist of North American Odonata” by Paulson & Dunkle (2018) notes the following:
Etymology for Libellula incesta Hagen: “incestuous, perhaps alluding to looking like a hybrid between other closely related species”.
Regarding scientific names given to odonates: “some defy understanding. In particular, Hermann Hagen applied unusual names to many of his species, and to our knowledge his allusions were never revealed; some of them seem to indicate a rather peculiar mindset.”
3 Likes
This name isn’t too crazy when you consider what Uroplatus phantasticus looks like: satanic leaf-tailed gecko.
2 Likes
A zoo near me has this species but signs it as "Fantastic Leaf-tailed Gecko - which is the exact opposite of that name.
4 Likes
Checkerspots is one I thought was pretty good.
2 Likes
Air Potato, despite sounding very strange, is a very accurate name. At least it was not called Floating Spuds.
4 Likes
But it isn’t an animal.
Another animal name I find strange is an African animal called a zorilla. In Spanish, that word means “little fox,” yet the zorilla looks nothing at all like a fox, but looks almost exactly like a skunk.
2 Likes
Oops. Maybe I should make make a separate thread for Plants? That is assuming it does not already exist…
2 Likes
Theres a hill not too far from my house where ground spiders appear to have been collected in 1984 that were named Apopyllus now, in reference to Apocalypse Now, the film from 1979.
I have never seen the spider in the wild and there are no records of any collections afterwards. So I dont even know if the species is real, or just a mis-ID, or if it’s gone locally extinct (and thereby fully extinct, having been described from only one hill)
5 Likes