Funny, long, or just plain weird animal names

Yep. It is a very descriptive name. It definitely looks like an overripe banana.

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Should really have posted this at Christmas time, not the height of the northern hemisphere summer
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/186862-Ba-humbugi

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Scientific name for thrush is turdus!

There is a turdus maximus!

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I like Boops boops. It’s not the weirdest, but it’s fun to say.

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Naming something after something that has no name? The mind boggles! (Or at least mine does…)

BTW, the Wikipedia entry for the Sin Nombre Virus gives a different account, but says it was originally named the Muerto Canyon (Death Canyon) Virus. So, either way it’s an interesting origin.

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You could be right. I heard the story of how the Sin Nombre virus was named (from someone on the original study team) about 30 years ago but I might be misremembering it. There are a number of obscure little places in the Southwest U.S. that bear the name Sin Nombre.

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Does extinct animals count? Paleontology is a goldmine of weird and funny names.

Irritator challengeri (of course, this famous spinosaurid) – name derived from “irritation, the feeling the authors felt (understated here) when discovering that the snout had been artificially elongated” (by fossil poachers) and from “Professor Challenger, the ficticious hero and dinosaur discoverer of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s Lost World”.

Thanos simonattoi (abelisaurid) – needless to say, it was named after Thanos.

Drinker – junior synonym of Nanosaurus; named after palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope.

Sordes pilosus (pterosaur) – “hairy filth” or “hairy scum”.

Bulbasaurus phylloxyron (dicynodont) – surprisingly not directly named after the Pokémon Bulbasaur and its’ battle technique (phylloxyron means “leaf razor”), however #1…

Gorynychus (therocephalian) – named after legendary Russian three-headed dragon Zmey Gorynych and also a play on the English word “gory” (bloody) and the Ancient Greek ὄνῠχος (claw).

Nochnitsa (gorgonopsian) – named after nocturnal female spirits that attacks sleeping humans in Slavic legends (also the namesake for Myotis bats in Russian).

Microphon (seymouriamorph) and Macrophon (procolophonid).

Han solo (agnostid trilobite) – according to the official description, the genus was actually named after Chinese Han, and the species epitet is a reference to the last surviving member of its’ family, however #2 (search for Han solo on this page)…

Gluteus minimus (problematic fossils from the Late Devonian of Iowa) – the exact etymology is not clear, but reference to the gluteal region is obvious.

There is a collection of weird scientific names: Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature.

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For funny and immature, Spinus pinus. I’ll leave the pronunciation up to you.

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Pentodon idiota
Hemorrhois
And finally - Enema

Sorry

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It had better. I just googled, “longest genus name,” and the result was Kimmeridgebrachypteraeschnidium.

Which, according to Fossilworks, is an extinct dragonfly.

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This one always annoys me:
St. Andrew’s Cross - Hypericum hypericoides
St. Peter’s-Wort - Hypericum crux-andreae

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I have just learned that the common name of a species of mold is “dog vomit slime mold”. How on earth did that come about?

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Well, it looks perfectly like dog or cat vomit, both colour and texture.

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Honestly, I have never seen dog vomit that was yellow, assuming that all the dog vomit slime molds are yellow.

What about this name instead: regurgitated lemon or orange peel slime mold?

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It’s putrefactive fuligo in Russian, but I like dog vomit name and it’s already a common name for long time.
https://barkformore.com/yellow-puke-in-dogs/

Thanks for the link. I believe you. I was joking.

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I just decided to look it up too!.)

Boy! The things that you can find on the Internet!

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You can’t forget the other fantastic species names in Gelae:
image

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