Funny, long, or just plain weird animal names

Giant floater is a solid one :sweat_smile:

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Moorish Idols (a family of fish containing only one species, the Moorish Idol)

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Dtella (gecko, Gehyra).
Scissor grinder (cicada). I guess, though, that cicadas sound more like scissor grinding than like flute or lyre playing, which is what names like Neotibicen lyricen mean.
Promachus vertebratus (robber fly, not vertebrate).
Tree cattle (bark louse). WP says “Nymphs often move in a tightly packed herd.”

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Sounds like a band name… Live on stage tonight … “The Moorish Idols”

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pua’a means “pig” in Hawaiian, and that part of the name refers to the pig-like snout of the fish, I believe. (I grew up in Hawaii)

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Humuhumunukunukuapua’a– definitely a mouthful!

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It’s one of the many stuff a childhood of watching the octonauts taught me. Man I miss that show.

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Lyric cobweaver (Theridiidae, same family as widows). Lyric cicadas at least make sounds. I’ve never heard a theridiid make any sound that anyone, even another spider, could consider lyric.

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octonauts mention!!

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A treble bar is a lep. Apparently someone thought the markings on the wings look like musical staves.
A black redhorse is a fish, unrelated to the seahorse.
“Grateful midget” is, I think, a mistranslation. Persona grata is a welcome or acceptable person, not a grateful person.
A wandering leg sausage is a Tanzanian millipede. It’s related to the millipede I found on my floor.

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The Alisma-leaved Button-celery sounds like a plant with no identify of its own. (Eryngium alismafolia)

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The screwworm fly has a terrifying specific epithet: hominivorax. “Eater of hominids.”

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Miss Willmott’s Ghost (Eryngium giganteum)

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Thanks for posting this @sedgequeen. Not being much of a gardener or botanist, I hadn’t heard of this plant before but was intrigued by the name. I therefore googled it hoping that there’d be an interesting story behind it. Apparently the Miss Willmott in question was quite a notable gardener around the turn of the 20th Century. The story goes, although it seems there’s precious little evidence, that she was a guerrilla gardener and secretly planted the seeds of this plant in her friend’s gardens. What I also found that was of more interest to me was that Willmott’s own garden is just 25 miles from where I live and is now managed by our county’s Wildlife Trust. I shall make a point of popping over there sometime to see if I can see Miss Willmott’s Ghost in her own back yard. Thank you!

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Very interesting!

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Triangles.

Its a species of moth. Triangles.

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I happened upon facts about the names of Underwing moths recently. After googling more, I found there is already an iNaturalist Forum Thread on the topic. Enjoy!

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/moths-in-the-catocala-genus-have-interesting-names/36805

From https://www.stcnature.org/good-natured/underwings-2/

Long ago the Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus came up with the idea of naming underwings using a theme of women and relationships. He gave us the names of the European species C. nupta, (“marriage”) C. pacta (“agreement”) and C. sponsa (“wife”). Other scientists followed suit, and today we have names like the girlfriend, darling, sweetheart and betrothed; the bride, once-married and old wife; and the tearful, gloomy, inconsolable and widow underwings.

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I know it’s extinct but I gotta say irritator challengeri. It was a spinosaur from Brazil that is named after the irritating challenge of preparing the fossils after they were taken from smugglers.


(art by anthon500)

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Both species of triangles are in the genus Trigonodes (which means triangular) in the tribe Euclidiini, which implies that the sum of the angles is 180°.

Should the metric paper wasp be the mascot of the metric system?

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HELL YEAH!

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