Trendsurfing: Naming your own species (The Times)
By David Rowan
Any billionaire narcissist can buy their name on a museum or opera house. Nowadays, though, you need an entire species designated in your honour to prove that you have truly arrived. The right to name living creatures, traditionally the prerogative of entomologists and lepidopterists, has suddenly become a marketable commodity available to anyone with a bank balance as big as their ego. Whether you fancy being remembered as bird or a beetle, just swipe your credit card and we'll see what we can do.
The trend started six years ago, when the Texan branch of the Audubon Society, a conservation body, auctioned the naming rights to a previously unknown bird found in Brazil. The auction had a $200,000 starting price, to benefit environmental work, but the plan was never a flyer: not one bid came in, so the antshrike had to live with the unremarkable tag Thamnophilus divisorius . The concept itself took hold, though, and soon enterprising explorers were haggling with individuals and corporations seeking linguistic immortality. A German research body, Patrons of Biodiversity (Biopat.de), opened a catalogue of orchids and frogs that could be yours for a suitable donation; Canada's Nature Discovery Fund began advertising insects. A South Korean manufacturing firm, Eagon, soon even had its own butterfly.
But the deal that changed the rules was struck this spring, when a Bolivian monkey went at auction for $650,000. Robert Wallace, working for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, was surveying in Bolivia's Madidi national park five years ago when he found what he concluded was a previously unrecorded species of titi monkey. The society offered the naming rights in a fundraising auction in March, hoping to interest, as Wallace put it, "someone who not only wants to name a species, but who wants to make a real, lasting contribution to the protection of a truly important place". It helped that the cuddly little creature was rather cute; soon media figures such as Ellen deGeneres were bidding along.
The final offer came from the online casino GoldenPalace.com, which has built its entire PR strategy on winning eBay auctions to have its logo tattooed onto women's body parts or to acquire food supposedly bearing the likeness of Jesus Christ. You might wonder why a casino would wish to pay quite so much to name a primate Callicebus aureipalatii - that's aureipalatii, as in the Latin for "golden palace" - but it gambled on the free publicity from all the media outlets forced to mention that web address. Uh-oh, looks like we fell for it too.
Now ants are on the menu. Brian Fisher, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences, is currently offering to name any of 600 newly discovered Madagascan ants after you or your business for $10,000. Stretch to $25,000, and you can have an entire genus. Not everyone in the scientific community is amused - some researchers want to rethink the whole taxonomy system in a way that would subvert this enterprising trend - but Fisher knows where the money is. He has already named one species Proceratium google - no doubt hoping a search engine will find him.
You may decide that naming a creature after a loved one would make the ultimate in indulgent Christmas gifts, but a word of warning: choose your species carefully to avoid giving offence. Last April, entomologists at Cornell University declared proudly that three newly categorised insects would be named in honour of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Nice touch, but it would have looked a tad more more respectful had the creatures not been slime-mould beetles.
(The Times Magazine, November 26 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
Any billionaire narcissist can buy their name on a museum or opera house. Nowadays, though, you need an entire species designated in your honour to prove that you have truly arrived. The right to name living creatures, traditionally the prerogative of entomologists and lepidopterists, has suddenly become a marketable commodity available to anyone with a bank balance as big as their ego. Whether you fancy being remembered as bird or a beetle, just swipe your credit card and we'll see what we can do.
The trend started six years ago, when the Texan branch of the Audubon Society, a conservation body, auctioned the naming rights to a previously unknown bird found in Brazil. The auction had a $200,000 starting price, to benefit environmental work, but the plan was never a flyer: not one bid came in, so the antshrike had to live with the unremarkable tag Thamnophilus divisorius . The concept itself took hold, though, and soon enterprising explorers were haggling with individuals and corporations seeking linguistic immortality. A German research body, Patrons of Biodiversity (Biopat.de), opened a catalogue of orchids and frogs that could be yours for a suitable donation; Canada's Nature Discovery Fund began advertising insects. A South Korean manufacturing firm, Eagon, soon even had its own butterfly.
But the deal that changed the rules was struck this spring, when a Bolivian monkey went at auction for $650,000. Robert Wallace, working for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, was surveying in Bolivia's Madidi national park five years ago when he found what he concluded was a previously unrecorded species of titi monkey. The society offered the naming rights in a fundraising auction in March, hoping to interest, as Wallace put it, "someone who not only wants to name a species, but who wants to make a real, lasting contribution to the protection of a truly important place". It helped that the cuddly little creature was rather cute; soon media figures such as Ellen deGeneres were bidding along.
The final offer came from the online casino GoldenPalace.com, which has built its entire PR strategy on winning eBay auctions to have its logo tattooed onto women's body parts or to acquire food supposedly bearing the likeness of Jesus Christ. You might wonder why a casino would wish to pay quite so much to name a primate Callicebus aureipalatii - that's aureipalatii, as in the Latin for "golden palace" - but it gambled on the free publicity from all the media outlets forced to mention that web address. Uh-oh, looks like we fell for it too.
Now ants are on the menu. Brian Fisher, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences, is currently offering to name any of 600 newly discovered Madagascan ants after you or your business for $10,000. Stretch to $25,000, and you can have an entire genus. Not everyone in the scientific community is amused - some researchers want to rethink the whole taxonomy system in a way that would subvert this enterprising trend - but Fisher knows where the money is. He has already named one species Proceratium google - no doubt hoping a search engine will find him.
You may decide that naming a creature after a loved one would make the ultimate in indulgent Christmas gifts, but a word of warning: choose your species carefully to avoid giving offence. Last April, entomologists at Cornell University declared proudly that three newly categorised insects would be named in honour of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Nice touch, but it would have looked a tad more more respectful had the creatures not been slime-mould beetles.
(The Times Magazine, November 26 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
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