BBC Earth creates documentaries (I referred to them as specials) with amazing videos. I have one of the 4-disc ones narrated by Sigourney Weaver and a shorter 1-disc narrated by Mike Rowe.
Link to their page → https://www.bbcearth.com/shows/planet-earth
I actually do not keep tack of those so I do not know whether it made an appearance there. Came to know it through a post by Nick Volpe
Also the Dubious Dtella. This one looks sort of wide-eyed and innocent.
Xlavitia is the Spanish common name for a fish. Xlavitias occur in coastal USA from New York to Texas, adjacent parts of eastern Mexico, and the Yucatán Peninsula. Very few words in any language begin with “xl”. I suspect Maya as the source language, as the fish has been observed northwest of Chicxulub; in the part of Mexico just south of Texas, the only place name of Nahuatl origin I noticed is El Guajolote, Tamaulipas.
Who’s Molly Miller? A blenny.
There’s a snail called shagreen. Where’s the shark?
Myelaphus is a robber fly, not a mouse deer.
Nycticorax nycticorax nycticorax is rather fun to pronounce.
British Soldier Lichen
following @triceratops_65’s theme:
Irritator challengeri, related to Spinosaurus. Fossil collectors tried to repair it using plaster, and that was irritating to the paleontologists who had to remove it.
Yi qi, a really odd bird with bat-like wings, the shortest name given to a fossil.
Not an animal, but this Peritrich apparently has the English name “Sliminess of the skin”??
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/955047-Trichodina-domerguei
Aplos simplex is a planthopper. It means “Simple simple”. The usual spelling in the Greek I know is απλους, contracted from απλοος, but απλος is attested in ancient Greek and the usual modern spelling.
Micromus is a lacewing, not a small mouse.
What! I know Aplos simplex as I am a planthopper identifier and never noticed this etymology haha
Alternaria alternata - I were shocked when I came to know of this fungus, the name is so cool.
Spanish for “gar” (fish) is “catán”, just like the hexagonal island in Los Colonos de Catán.
The question mark is a comma. The commas are called “mariposas alas de ángel” in Spanish, but the English name for some butterflies in the tribe is “anglewings”, not “angelwings”.
And who could forget GREMLIN the early Cretaceous ceratopsian?
Water penny beetles (Psephenidae) larvae look very unlike most beetle grubs.
There’s a beetle genus called Ootheca. I haven’t found out anything about its egg laying habits, but some observations of oothecae of other insects have been misidentified as this.
The dancing kiss fly, which belongs to a fly family I don’t know, is named for its courtship behavior.
I were so confused before I understood what was going on here… That is so hilarious.
Irena Dworakowska has named tons of weird names, which are very appreciable:
Koperta - envelope
Dziwneono - strange (Polish).
In particular there is a species Dziwneono etcetera. It indeed it beautiful and I must agree that “it’s strange etcetera” would be a suitable to describe its beauty.
Kusala - skillful (Sanskrit)
Czarnastopa - black foot (Polish)
All species of Bolanusoides named by her meant “hero” in various languages.
Most of the species of Agnesiella named by her are just feminine names given to people.
The genera Musbrnoia and Britimnathista are a shortened version of two museums whether type specimens of their type species are kept - The Moravian Museum in Brno, Czech Republic, and the Natural History Museum in London which was previously known as the British Museum of Natural History respectively.
Proskura was named after her mother’s boss.
Then several of names from Polish names of the months -
Opamata kwietniowa - (Polish - April)
Opamata novembers - (English - November)
Opamata styczniowa - (Polish - January)
Opamata grudniowa - (Polish - December)
Amrasca (Quartasca) czerwcowa - (Polish: Czerwiec - June)
Gredzinskiya lipcowa - (Polish: Lipiec - July)
Sandanella sierpniowa - (Polish: Sierpień - August)
Motschulskyia (Motschulskyia) motschulskyi - The genus was named by Kirkaldy, 1905 as a replacement name for a preoccupied name Conometopus Motschulsky, 1859. The species has named by Dworakowska in 1971 and the entire name sounds like a tongue twister.
There are way more such names that are not coming to my mind right away. I will add them when I remember them.
“Zig zag sp. nov.”
“The species name, Zig zag, is formed as an "arbitrary combination of letters”, alluding to the characteristic sinusoidal zigzag-shaped tracks this species leaves when moving over the sand.”
Miralles, Aurélien; Schmidt, Robin; Belluardo, Francesco; Rahagalala, Ny Ando; Monvoisin, Evariste; Ratsoavina, Fanomezana M.; Köhler, Jörn; Glaw, Frank; Vences, Miguel (2026-02-23). “Zigzags in the White Sand Belt: A new, highly divergent lineage of sand-swimmer skink from Madagascar (Squamata: Scincidae)”
