Asota just got robbed! Poor tiger moth.
Plutoniumidae is a family of centipedes. The type genus is Plutonium, so I’d expect the family to be Plutoniidae. The rule is broken if it would result in synonymy, such as the bee subfamily Dasypodainae being named after (not named for) the armadillo family Dasypodidae (which implies Dasypodinae even though there’s only one genus). But why is a centipede named Plutonium?
It is the 94th element on the periodic table, and is very radioactive. Is the centipede radioactive?
Probably no more than a kiwifruit, not that I’ve ever Geiger counted kiwifruits.
Lanthanidia deliciosa: What the kiwifruit would be if it weren’t so radioactive.
You just inspired me to look up a whole range of facts about kiwis.
So I was inspired to look up the origins of the genus name and it was first erected in Cavanna 1881. Plutonium the element wasn’t named until 1941 so the centipede was named after Pluto, Roman god of the underworld, not the radioactive element. This makes sense as the first named species were blind cave dwellers from Italy.
You are right though that the reason Plutoniidae wasn’t used is because it was pre-occupied by semi-slugs https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/1110411-Plutoniinae
According to Shelly 1997 the centipedes missed out by a month.
Anyone heard of the cyanide millipedes?(and they had to add an cyanide into an insects name?)
Millipedes aren’t insects (sorry I had to be pedantic).
Also, could it be that they do contain cyanide? Because I know a lot of millipedes are in fact poisonous.
We’ve generated this long-running thread, and somehow nobody’s yet mentioned the Vampire Squid from Hell?
yeah but eh still phylum arthropoada so im gonna call anything there insects even tho its not right
The idiot fish
The poetry moth is a noctuid. Doesn’t look at all like poetry.
Without looking it up, can you guess what a white baby ear is?
Oh my gosh! It’s early in my day (4:50am) and I guessed right… the first time! Thanks!
Canary thorn is a moth.
A couple of non-animals are turkey tangle frogfruit (Verbenaceae, and oddly its genus is named Phyla) and pingpong bat fungus, which is in fact a mushroom, though it doesn’t look like one.