The Name Game

Today's odd zoo facts are brought to you courtesy of Reality, which remains obstinately stranger than Fiction anyday.

Meet the GoldenPalace.com Monkey, otherwise known as Callicebus aureipalatii. The naming rights had been auctioned off to raise funds to continue research into wildlife habitats and preservation, so it's all for a good cause, and at least in Latin, Golden Palace Monkey does sound rather classy.

Which is more than you can say for Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi and Agathidium rumsfeld, the three most recently named new species of mould-eating beetles discovered by entomologists Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller, and which were named after the unholy trinity of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Other beetles had been named after the scientists' wives, and Darth Vader.

A Wholphin is apparently what you call the offspring of a whale and a dolphin. Personally, the naming of hybrid animals always reminds me of bored children playing at riddles, rather along the lines of: What do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo? A woolly jumper!

I don't know. We have scientists in China fusing human cells with rabbit eggs, and the only rational response appears to be to sit back and nod sagely and say, ah, yes, there be chimeras.

The only thing weirder than our world is our response to it.