Naming an animal is a very serious business often taken care of by scientists and zoologist. But sometimes they come up with animal names that you can’t help but think of the thought process that went behind it. Here are a few real animals with unreal names.
Spiny Lumpsucker
It may seem like the name of a villain’s sidekick or a special action move in a cartoon movie. But Spiny Lumpsucker is a real fish found all along in the northern Pacific Ocean from the US to northern Japan. They are globular shaped, generally about an inch big – much like a swimming golf ball. They neither spin nor suck anything but are friendly little round fish that are known to eat out of the hands of divers.
Chicken Turtle
Chicken Turtles are primarily found in the south-eastern United States. Sadly, it looks nothing like a chicken. It looks more like a painted turtle except for an unusually long neck, almost as long as its shell. The turtle was named such because it tasted like chicken – when killing and eating turtles are still allowed in the US. Now the main threat to chicken turtle right now is not human hunters but habitat loss.
Rasberry crazy ant
The Tawny crazy ant or the Caribbean crazy ant is now known as the Rasberry crazy ant. “Rasberry” comes from Texan exterminator Tom Rasberry who noticed a rapid increase in their numbers in the early 2000’s and are called “crazy” because of their quick unpredictable movements. That’s crazy, right?
Tasselled wobbegong
This particular species of carpet sharks is found in the shallow reefs off northern Australia so there is a high possibility that an Aussie may have named it and that explains the name to an extent. And of all the other wobbegongs, this particular one is the most aggressive.
Diabolical Iron-clad Beetle
This could have been a name of a supervillain in the Marvel/DC universe or a heavy metal band. But the real thing is the most durable beetle of the world. An inch long Diabolical Iron-clad Beetlecan withstand a force of almost 15 kgs. While other beetles’ life span varies from a few weeks to months, Diabolical Iron-clad Beetle lives up to two years or more. Such a cool beetledeserves a cool name.
Strange tailed tyrant
If you see a bird for the first time, with tail feathers that are almost twice the size of the actual bird, you will think “strange”. That exactly what must have happened to the scientist who named this bird when he saw them for the first time in South America. Strange tailed tyrants are flycatchers that likes to live in grasslands and knows how to put up a spectacular mating dance using their strange tails.
