A Beetle By Any Other Name

Summary

Summary of "A Beetle By Any Other Name" – 99% Invisible

Introduction: Exploring the Hidden World of Hitler's Beetle

In the March 4, 2025 episode of 99% Invisible, host Roman Mars delves into the intricate and controversial world of biological nomenclature through the lens of a particularly infamous species: Anophthalmus hitlery—commonly known as Hitler's Beetle. The episode navigates the historical practices of naming species, the ethical dilemmas surrounding offensive names, and the real-world implications these names have on conservation efforts.

Journey into the Cave: Meeting Andrej Kapler

The episode begins in the depths of Pekel, a giant limestone cave in central Slovenia. British expat and 99% Invisible correspondent Will Aspinall teams up with Andrej Kapler, a researcher from the Slovenian National Institute of Biology, to explore the cave in search of the elusive Hitler’s Beetle.

• Andrej Kapler (00:58-01:03): Discusses the cave's ominous name, "Pekel," which means "hell" in Slovene, attributing it to rock formations resembling the shape of the devil.

Despite the challenging conditions—narrow passages and recent heavy rainfall—Kapler remains unfazed, emphasizing his preference for solitude over social interactions.

• Andrej Kapler (02:07): "I’m more comfortable in a cave than with people."

The Legacy of Naming: From Linnaeus to Today

Roman Mars provides a historical backdrop, tracing the practice of naming species back to Carl Linnaeus, an 18th-century Swedish botanist who revolutionized taxonomy with his binomial nomenclature system. This system assigns each species a two-word Latin or Greek name, consisting of the genus and species, facilitating a standardized method of classification.

• Roman Mars (04:15): "The practice of naming species after humans goes back to the 18th century in a man named Carl Linnaeus."

Speakers Sandy Knapp and Will Aspinall elaborate on Linnaeus’s influence and the widespread adoption of his system across Europe, despite competing naming conventions of the time.

Contemporary Naming Practices: Honor, Controversy, and Creativity

As scientific discovery accelerated, so did the number of species requiring names. This led to increasingly creative—and sometimes problematic—naming choices. Modern taxonomists often honor celebrities, public figures, and personal acquaintances, resulting in names like Nonaria Swifty (after Taylor Swift) and Agra schwarzeneggeri (after Arnold Schwarzenegger).

• Derek Hennan (12:05): "When you have 50 new species to name... if you want an obscure millipede to stand out, why not name it after one of the most famous and beloved people on the planet?"

While these names can generate public interest and media coverage, they also raise questions about the appropriateness and ethical implications of such practices.

The Controversial Case of Hitler's Beetle

The focus shifts to Anophthalmus hitlery, a beetle named in 1937 by Oskar Scheibel, an esteemed entomologist and Nazi sympathizer. The name was intended as a tribute to Adolf Hitler, intertwining scientific nomenclature with political ideology.

• Roman Mars (03:15): "The beetle is notorious because it is named after arguably the worst human being in history."

This naming has inadvertently made the beetle a target for neo-Nazi collectors, compromising conservation efforts. The beetle’s status as a symbol for hate groups has tangible consequences, including poaching and the destruction of its fragile cave habitat.

• Andrej Kapler (15:33): "It turns out Hitler's beetle is in high demand from far-right extremists who are buying up dead specimens like tiny Nazi trophies."

Debate on Renaming: Ethical Imperatives vs. Scientific Tradition

The episode delves into the heated debate within the scientific community regarding the renaming of species with offensive names. Richard Ladle, a Professor of Conservation Science, co-authored a paper advocating for the removal of such names and the cessation of naming species after people altogether.

• Richard Ladle (22:21): "Do you want a species to be a living reminder? Because that's what it is, you know."

Conversely, Sandy Knapp argues against a wholesale renaming effort, citing the monumental task it would entail and the pressing need to address biodiversity conservation instead.

• Sandy Knapp (26:07): "There are thousands of names of things that are named for people... we're in the middle of a planetary emergency and a biodiversity crisis."

Despite resistance from the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), which maintains naming stability, recent actions by the International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi and Plants (ICN) show tentative progress. In the 2024 International Botanical Congress in Madrid, over 200 offensive names were successfully changed through a loophole allowing corrections for misspellings.

• Sandy Knapp (27:12): "It's very, very offensive... All of those names were changed."

Conservation Implications and Personal Perspectives

Andrej Kapler emphasizes that the issue extends beyond nomenclature, highlighting the tangible threats to biodiversity posed by politically charged names. While the name "Hitler's Beetle" is a historical anomaly, it symbolizes a broader ethical challenge in taxonomy.

• Andrej Kapler (28:13): "For me, it's important what kind of animal it is, where it lives, what it does... its position in ecology and everything."

Despite efforts, Kapler and Aspinall’s recent expedition yielded no new specimens, a setback attributed to environmental factors rather than neo-Nazi interference.

• Andrej Kapler (17:35): "You have to be extremely patient with the cave beetles."

Conclusion: Navigating the Future of Species Naming

The episode concludes by acknowledging the complexity of the naming debate, balancing respect for scientific tradition with the moral responsibilities of the scientific community. While some steps towards change have been made, as seen with the ICN’s adjustments, the broader consensus within taxonomy remains resistant to widespread renaming initiatives.

• Richard Ladle (25:22): "If you have to name 200 new species, that's difficult. Yeah, but it's not that difficult."

Ultimately, "A Beetle By Any Other Name" underscores the profound impact that something as seemingly simple as a name can have on both scientific integrity and societal values. It calls for a thoughtful reassessment of naming practices to ensure that taxonomy contributes positively to both science and social ethics.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Andrej Kapler (02:07): "I’m more comfortable in a cave than with people."
• Roman Mars (04:15): "The practice of naming species after humans goes back to the 18th century in a man named Carl Linnaeus."
• Derek Hennan (12:05): "If you want an obscure millipede to stand out, why not name it after one of the most famous and beloved people on the planet?"
• Roman Mars (03:15): "The beetle is notorious because it is named after arguably the worst human being in history."
• Richard Ladle (22:21): "Do you want a species to be a living reminder? Because that's what it is, you know."
• Sandy Knapp (26:07): "We're in the middle of a planetary emergency and a biodiversity crisis."

Closing Thoughts

"A Beetle By Any Other Name" offers a compelling exploration of the intersection between taxonomy, ethics, and conservation. Through engaging storytelling and expert insights, 99% Invisible illuminates the unseen complexities behind the names we assign to the natural world, urging listeners to consider the broader implications of scientific nomenclature.

Transcript

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[Roman Mars]

Hello beautiful nerds. It's Roman here. If you're loving 99% invisible and you want to hear new episodes ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast+ on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus to start your free trial today. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In a valley in central Slovenia, there's a giant limestone cave called Pekel, which means hell in Slovene.

[Will Aspinall]

If you look hard at the rocks.

[Andrej Kapler]

Above the entrance, you can just make.

[Will Aspinall]

Out the shape of the devil, which.

[Andrej Kapler]

Is one explanation for how the cave got its name.

[Roman Mars]

That is British expat and 99pi's Slovenia correspondent, will Aspinall.

[Andrej Kapler]

I recently met up with Andrej Kapler from the Slovenian National Institute of Biology. Andrej studies the ecology of caves and today he is taking me spelunking. I'm not naturally inclined to go into caves.

[Will Aspinall]

Is it safe?

[Andrej Kapler]

Ah, it's completely safe. But there's one caveat in this case, because it was very, very rainy these days and hopefully it didn't. It didn't flood. But if it did flood, then we're in trouble.

Okay, we're in the cave. The cave is narrow, only about a meter wide in places, but it's like 15 meters high. It's a chasm and it's flooded.

[Will Aspinall]

Oh, it's beautiful.

[Andrej Kapler]

Yeah, it is, but wet.

[Will Aspinall]

You are scared of caves.

[Andrej Kapler]

Never was. Actually. I'm more comfortable in a cave than with people.

Andre and I are not exploring a cave called Hel just for fun. Were on a mission to catch an elusive insect that Andre studies. A week earlier he left seven traps inside the cave and baited them with a special recipe.

It is a nice mixture of beef liver, fish and gorgonzola. You put them in a vase and marinate them for a few days on sun.

Absolutely disgusting. I'm trying to like these creatures.

Oh, it's easy. They're beautiful.

The beautiful creature that we are looking for has only been found in five caves in the north of Slovenia. It's in a group of 51 known beetles called Anophthalmus, Greek for without eyes.

These are not very big beetles. Nothing special about them, more or less. All look like they look the same. So nothing special about as a beetle, just the name is special.

[Roman Mars]

The beetle is notorious because it is named after arguably the worst human being in history.

[Will Aspinall]

We are hunting for Anophthalmus Hitlery, more commonly known as Hitler's beetle.

[Andrej Kapler]

Despite living in complete darkness in a handful of caves in a tiny central European country, this unremarkable insect is getting a lot of unwelcome attention.

[Roman Mars]

Right now, Hitler's beetle is at the center of a fierce debate raging in the usually polite worlds of botany and zoology. It's a debate about whether we should rename species that are named after objectionable human beings, and even whether we should be naming organisms after people at all.

[Will Aspinall]

Plants and animals have no say over what we humans call them. But it turns out a controversial scientific name can profoundly impact how a species fares in the real world.

[Roman Mars]

The practice of naming species after humans goes back to the 18th century in a man named Carl Linnaeus.

[Sandy Knapp]

Linnaeus was a really interesting character. So he was a Swedish botanist.

[Will Aspinall]

Sandy Knapp is also a botanist and the author of in the Name of Remarkable Plants and the Extraordinary People Behind Their Names.

[Sandy Knapp]

He was a Swedish doctor, actually, because in the 18th century, which is when Linnaeus lived, medicine was entirely based on plants. He was also incredibly arrogant and he was convinced that he could just completely reform how we understood nature today.

[Will Aspinall]

His arrogance seems justified because he more or less met that lofty goal. Linnaeus found order in the chaos of the natural world by creating a new framework for naming and categorising every known animal and plant.

[Roman Mars]

Before Linnaeus, the names of organisms were really more like sentences.

[Sandy Knapp]

So it would be a thing like this is the plant that has white flowers with yellow bits in the middle and leaves which are slightly incised at the edges. So that would be the name of the plant.

[Roman Mars]

Linnaeus knew this was really cumbersome and so he came up with a simpler naming convention. He gave every plant and animal a two word name in either Latin or Ancient Greek. To take a well known example, Linnaeus called human beings Homo sapiens.

[Andrej Kapler]

The first word homo, meaning man, is a broad category, the genus. And then sapiens, which means wise or thinking, is the specific name or the species. Together, the genus and species are combined to create a scientific name that's both unique and easy to remember.

[Roman Mars]

This became Linnaeus binomial system. And over time, this concise piece of information designed was picked up by scientists all across Europe.

[Sandy Knapp]

And I think it took off because essentially it replicates the noun, adjective, construction of things that we have in most languages. We have bicycles, which is the genus, and we have red bicycles and green bicycles and golden bicycles and little bicycles.

[Will Aspinall]

But it wasn't inevitable that Linnaeus binomial system would become the standard. At the time, there were lots of weird and frankly, confusing alternatives.

[Sandy Knapp]

My favorite is one that was published in, oh, I don't know, about 1760 by someone called Bergeray in France.

[Andrej Kapler]

In Bergeret's system, each letter of a plant's name corresponded to some aspect of its biology. The idea was that the name could communicate important information about the species. But it looked like a jumble of seemingly random letters.

[Sandy Knapp]

The name of the plant was the combination of those letters. So it was B, R, Q, X.

[Roman Mars]

W. You know, I just love it when the brqxws are flowering in the spring.

[Sandy Knapp]

Is that easier to remember than Atropa belladonna for the deadly nightshade? And you can see why Linnaeus system caught on.

[Andrej Kapler]

Linnaeus was also a brilliant teacher, and.

[Will Aspinall]

At Uppsala University, just north of Stockholm.

[Andrej Kapler]

He inspired the brightest and bravest young men to go out and explore the natural world.

[Sandy Knapp]

They were called his apostles, but these were his students who basically went out. He sent them out around the world to collect plants in different parts of the world, because at that time that was beginning to become possible.

[Roman Mars]

His apostles traveled the world on dangerous scientific missions to Java, in Japan, Venezuela and Vietnam. Many of them lost their lives to tropical diseases. And Linnaeus decided to honor their contributions to science by naming organisms after them.

[Will Aspinall]

To use Sanley's analogy, not only were there red bicycles and yellow bicycles, but there were now Will's bicycles and Roman's bicycles too.

[Roman Mars]

And it wasn't just his apostles. Linnaeus also named plants after scientists he admired. Take, for example, the magnolia.

[Sandy Knapp]

Pierre Magnol was a botanist who wrote a flora of the area around Montpellier and was one of the people who sort of first came up with the concept of plants having families, plants being in families. And Linnaeus was a great admirer of Magnols, so he named magnolia for Magnol.

[Will Aspinall]

But Linnaeus was clear that not just anyone should be given the honour of having a species or a genus named after them. He even wrote down guidelines about what type of person was acceptable.

[Sandy Knapp]

They weren't rules, as in you had to follow them, but they were his rules for how things should be done properly. Things, like names, should not be used to gain the favor or preserve the memory of saints or of men famous in some Other art. So his view was that you should name things for people who have promoted the science of botany.

[Will Aspinall]

Linnaeus named 12,000 species in his lifetime, and actually very few of those were named after people. But in the centuries that followed, as more and more plants and animals got discovered, the practice became increasingly common.

[Roman Mars]

And Linnaeus guidelines about what kind of people you should name a species after went more or less out the window. Increasingly, scientists began to name species after people they just happened to be fond of.

[Andrej Kapler]

Slovenia's infamous beetle was very nearly given a different name. The insect was discovered in 1932 by a Slovenian naturalist named Vladimir Kodri in a cave very close to the one I visited with Andrej. Kodrich thought he had found a new species, but he wanted a second opinion. And so he sent a specimen to an Austrian beetle collector called Oskar Scheibel.

Oscar Scheibel was actually very good entomologist. He had money, so he could afford to go to trips, he could afford to buy specimens from people like Mr. Kodridge, and he had vast knowledge about this.

[Will Aspinall]

Scheibel confirmed that the beetle was a new species. And adhering to Linnaeus guidelines, he initially agreed to name the new beetle Anophthalmus coudrici to honor the discoverer. But then he had a radical change of heart, because in addition to being a world famous bug collector, unfortunately, he.

[Andrej Kapler]

Was a passionate Nazi.

[Roman Mars]

And so Scheinbel's formal submission of Anathemas Hitleri in a German scientific journal in 1937 combined his two great entomology and.

[Andrej Kapler]

Adolf Hitler, this partner. So he gives these pieces to Adolf Hitler as his devotion to him.

[Will Aspinall]

Hitler was apparently quite tickled by this gesture. According to some sources, he sent a personal letter to Scheibel, thanks. Thanking him for the honor.

[Roman Mars]

Naming a species after Hitler might be particularly ill advised, but this kind of thing happens all the time. There are around 2 million known species in the world today. Each year, another 18,000 get discovered. And every new species needs a name.

[Will Aspinall]

Which has led to some, shall we say, interesting choices.

[Derek Hennan]

We did so much field work and went to so many different sites that, you know, those first few months when we first started, we're like, oh, man.

[Richard Ladle]

Look at this new species.

[Derek Hennan]

We were really excited, but we just kept finding more and more and more.

[Andrej Kapler]

This is Derek Hennan.

[Will Aspinall]

He's a diplodologist.

[Andrej Kapler]

That's a person who studies millipedes. In 2021 and 2022, Derek and two colleagues from Virginia Tech published several papers based on years researching the millipedes of Appalachia. Over that time, they discovered 50 new millipede species, and each one needed a name.

[Derek Hennan]

When you have 50 new species to name, you're really trying to pull from anything to kind of make them unique. And also just to sound different.

[Roman Mars]

They named some millipedes for the location where they were found. Like Nannaria scholastica, discovered on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Others got names related to how they looked, like Nanaria serpents, a millipede with distinctly snake like features.

[Will Aspinall]

But with so many new millipedes, place names and simple adjectives wouldn't suffice. And so they decided to name some of them after people. And if you want an obscure millipede to stand out, why not name it after one of the most famous and beloved people on the planet?

[Derek Hennan]

Yeah, well, first I would say, you know, I was just a fan of Taylor Swift's music and we'd be driving to these. I would like to play Taylor Swift when I could. And so kind of as a nod to her music keeping me in a good mood when I needed it, I wanted to name a species after her.

[Will Aspinall]

When Derek named a millipede Nonaria Swifty after the world's biggest pop star, he became perhaps the first diplodologist to be featured in the pages of Rolling Stone.

[Derek Hennan]

Which was great because normally millipedes don't make front page news too often. So it was a fun experience and I was just glad to have people excited about millipedes.

[Will Aspinall]

Taylor Swift wasn't the only human being Derek honored. Famous podcasters, the McElroy brothers also have a millipede named after them. And crawling around at the bottom of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains is Nanaria mariani, named after Derek's wife.

[Derek Hennan]

My wife often goes out with me when I want to look for millipedes. And so that was also just to show her my appreciation for how patient she is to wait for me as I. And digging around in the leaves.

[Roman Mars]

These days, lots of scientists are pulling stunts like this. There's a horsefly named Skaptia beyoncei and a tiny Mexican moth named Huacia Chewbacca.

[Will Aspinall]

Arnold Schwarzenegger has two insects named after him. A beetle called Agra schwarzeneggeri and a tiny fly with oversized legs called Megapropodifora arnoldi. And not all the names are cute and fun. Some scientists clearly have a political agenda.

[Roman Mars]

In 2005, entomologists Kelly Miller and Quentin Wheeler named a trio of slime mold beetles after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Announced at the height of the Iraq War, it seemed like a subversive act.

[Sandy Knapp]

People thought they're slime mold beetles. He must be kind of making a joke about how awful these people are. No, no, no. Quentin was a great admirer of the Republican administration at the time, and so he named those beetles to honour those men.

[Will Aspinall]

My first instinct was that these names were mostly harmless. If hard working zoologists want to shine a light on their relatively arcane work by naming a glowworm after their favourite podcaster or politician, who am I to judge? But sometimes a name is so loaded that it can cause very real problems for the unfortunate creature.

[Roman Mars]

Which brings us back to Hitler's beetle.

[Andrej Kapler]

Twenty years ago, Andre Kappler made a grim discovery in the cave where Anophthalmus Hitler was first found. Poachers had destroyed the fragile cave ecosystem and the ground was littered with beetle traps.

[Roman Mars]

It turns out Hitler's beetle is in high demand from far right extremists who are buying up dead specimens like tiny Nazi trophies.

[Andrej Kapler]

Every specimen is precious because we need it for research, not for showcasing them and boasting around. Oh, look what I have. I have Hitler's beetle. That's stupid.

[Roman Mars]

Preserved insects have been pillaged from museums in Germany. And in December 2023, the New York Times reported that specimens of Hitler's beetle were going for as much as $2,000.

[Will Aspinall]

Andre believes that's a huge exaggeration and the real price is a fraction of that. But the poaching is definitely real. In 2004, the Slovenian government introduced a law to protect underground creatures like Anophthalmus Hitlery, and the original cave was closed to the public. And while it's unlikely that Hitler's beetle will get poached to extinction by Neo Nazis, it's clear that the insect's terrible name is not making it any safer.

[Andrej Kapler]

Okay, now the moment of truth.

[Will Aspinall]

Andre and I are back in the cave called hell and we're checking his beetle traps. Okay, it's the first trap.

[Andrej Kapler]

This is the first nothing.

[Will Aspinall]

But sadly, we are striking out.

[Andrej Kapler]

God damn it.

Nothing.

[Will Aspinall]

Andre says our strike struggles on today's beetle hunt have very little to do with Neo Nazis and everything to do with the heavy rainfall we've been getting.

[Andrej Kapler]

This one got smothered.

[Will Aspinall]

Okay, that number five. Number five has got water in it, but the others were dry.

[Andrej Kapler]

Just didn't have any of Hitler's beetle.

[Will Aspinall]

Okay, this is the last one.

[Andrej Kapler]

The last one. And it's empty.

[Will Aspinall]

Does that surprise you?

[Sandy Knapp]

No.

[Andrej Kapler]

No. You have to be extremely patient with the cave beetles. So may take sometimes it takes years and years just to catch one so. So it's not a treasure, it's just misfortune.

[Roman Mars]

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[Roman Mars]

Hello beautiful nerds, It's Roman here. If you're loving 99% invisible and you want to hear new episodes, ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus to start your free trial today.

[Andrej Kapler]

Everyone who I interviewed for this story more or less agreed that the name Hitler's beetle was an unfortunate historical relic. Which begs the question, why not just change it?

[Roman Mars]

After all, it wouldn't be the first time. Shortly after World War II, Hitler's name was erased from roads and town squares all across Europe and beyond. Residents of Park Boulevard in Jaapank, Long island, might be blissfully unaware that Nazi sympathizers once named it Adolf Hitler Street.

[Andrej Kapler]

So if we can take Hitler's name off street signs, why can't we remove him from the natural world? It turns out that the international bodies that govern these matters are not big fans of change.

[Will Aspinall]

The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, or iczn, are responsible for the naming of animals, and they say that they have no power to change a name based on how offensive it is, a stance that's been getting a lot of heat in recent years.

[Richard Ladle]

It's a remarkably controversial subject, far more controversial than I ever imagined. I've been publishing scientific articles for 30 years now, and this has got the most amount of interest of anything that I've ever published.

[Andrej Kapler]

Richard Ladle is Professor of Conservation Science at the Federal University of Alagoas in Brazil. He was one of 11 scientists who co authored an article in the journal Nature, Ecology and Evolution arguing not only that offensive names like Anophthalmus Hitlery should be changed, but we should also stop the practice of naming animals after humans entirely.

[Richard Ladle]

Do you want a species to be a living reminder? Because that's what it is, you know. It's a living reminder of something that maybe doesn't deserve to be salivated.

[Will Aspinall]

Richard's main contribution to the paper was to provide some startling data. In Africa alone, a quarter of all vertebrates are named after people, and a large portion of these people are white British men and women from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[Andrej Kapler]

Europe's grim legacy still grows, walks, flies and swims in the habitats of these once colonised lands.

[Richard Ladle]

I remember going to London Zoo and seeing Lady Amherst's pheasant, which is just the most amazing looking bird. It's from China. You know, it could be the symbol of China. It's that amazing. It's, you know, it's one of the most beautiful birds in the world. Named after posh Englishwoman.

[Will Aspinall]

To Richard, the morality of this is pretty clear. But before the paper had even gone out, he was already getting the sense that not everyone in the scientific community agreed with him. One of the heads of his institution even urged him not to publish.

[Richard Ladle]

At which time I started to panic because then I realized that the S was really going to hit the fan.

[Roman Mars]

When the article finally came out in March 2023, many of his peers were outraged.

[Richard Ladle]

I was totally stunned how passionate some taxonomists were against this idea.

[Roman Mars]

The main argument against Richard's proposal is maintaining scientific continuity. Right now, the ICZN will only change names if further research causes the status of an animal to be revised from, say, a subspecies to a full species. They're conservative about change because they don't want to disrupt the chain of scientific knowledge that goes all the way back to Linnaeus.

[Will Aspinall]

For Richard, that feels like an excuse for inaction. He says that too often scientists regard themselves as being above politics.

[Richard Ladle]

The fundamental aspect of this, that naming something is a political act and, you know, pretending that it isn't is not particularly intellectually honest. And for any political act, we, we need to think about the, the potential consequences, not just now, but in the future.

[Roman Mars]

At the very least, Richard thinks scientists should challenge themselves to get more creative and specific when naming new species.

[Richard Ladle]

If you have to name 200 new species, that's difficult. Yeah, but it's not that difficult. Get a map out. There are ways to do this. Crowdsource it, use local words, use local landmarks. There's countless possibilities.

[Will Aspinall]

Richard is not short of ideas. And throughout our lively zoom call, I have to say he made a convincing advocate for change.

[Richard Ladle]

Yeah, I really feel we ought to give a bit more respect to nature and especially when we're naming it.

[Andrej Kapler]

But botanist Sandy Knapp is not totally convinced by Richard Ladle's proposal. She believes that changing all the species that are named after people would be a monumental undertaking.

[Sandy Knapp]

There are thousands of names of things that are named for people, thousands and thousands.

[Andrej Kapler]

And it's not like there's one master spreadsheet that you can just edit one time and be done with. Sandy says that going through and trying to change all those names in the countless places they appear would be extremely time consuming and an unnecessary distraction from much more pressing concerns.

[Sandy Knapp]

Time is a resource, and there's way more important things to do than changing all the names. I mean, we're in the middle of a planetary emergency and a biodiversity crisis. And so do we want to find out more about biodiversity and how to preserve it and restore it, or do we want to spend our time changing the names of things? To me, that's the choice.

[Roman Mars]

Currently, the ICZN have no appetite for taxonomical revolution. But the icn, or the International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi and Plants, has recently removed some offensive names. And although she isn't a fan of Richard's radical proposal, Sandy Knapp proudly officiated those changes at the 2024 International Botanical Congress in Madrid.

[Sandy Knapp]

And one of the proposals that was voted in is to take all of the species names, which are based on the epithet Khafre.

[Roman Mars]

Khafre is derived from a word that is a racial slur in South Africa.

[Sandy Knapp]

And that, for me, is actually important to recognize that that's something that needs to be changed. It's very, very offensive. It's offensive to a group of people. All of those names were changed. Take the sea away and they become.

[Roman Mars]

Afraid to do this. The congress exploited a loophole that allows scientific names to be corrected if they are misspelled. It gave delegates an opportunity to vote for this one specific change without committing to some groundbreaking new position on naming more broadly.

[Sandy Knapp]

Everyone was very respectful, you know. Well, if they weren't respectful, I would have kicked them out, but they were very respectful. And then we ran it. I ran it as a secret ballot. So there was a. So you just wrote yes or no on your bit of paper and put it in a box, and then it was counted and it was 63%.

[Andrej Kapler]

It was an historic moment. For the first time since Linnaeus came up with his binomial system, the offensive names of more than 200 plants, fungi and algae were changed.

[Will Aspinall]

As for Anophthalmus hitlery, I was surprised to learn that Andrzej is actually not all that concerned about the name.

[Andrej Kapler]

It's just a name for me. For me, it's important what kind of animal it is, where it lives, what it does, what it is, its position in ecology and everything.

Andre was more interested in the beetle itself.

[Will Aspinall]

I wasn't able to see one alive, but he had some dead Anophthalmus hitlery specimens he wanted to show me at his lab in Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital. Inside, he pointed to five tiny insects pinned neatly in a row, the color of aged bronze.

[Andrej Kapler]

So if you can see, it's A small, unremarkable, nothing to see, actually just a small beetle. Some, some, some people say, oh, it's just a, just an ant, but it's not. It's a beetle.

Under a microscope, it was possible to see their slender, almost elegant features. Andre says that the beetle evolved after an ancient ice age. When living above ground became impossible.

They couldn't live anymore in the, in the soil, in the gravel or whatever, so they moved underneath.

[Will Aspinall]

And looking at this creature close up, you can appreciate how it evolved to suit a life in perpetual darkness.

[Andrej Kapler]

If you live in a cave, you don't need ice, is just waste of energy to produce ice. And they don't have pigment. They're all this, this, the color of them is brownish yellow.

[Will Aspinall]

Hitler's beetle escaped from the worst conditions nature could throw at it. It adapted and thrived in a new underground environment where it lived out the next 2 million years.

[Andrej Kapler]

That's amazing. So 2 million years of life and then in the long last, you know, less than 100 years, it's named after the worst human in, in history.

Yeah. Well, it's not its fault.

[Roman Mars]

99% invisible was reported this week by Will Aspinall, Produced and edited by Emmett Fitzgerald, mixed by Martin Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real Fact checking by Graham Hathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kolstad is the digital director. Delaney hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Jason De Leon, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leigh Lashma Dawn, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, and me, roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Sirius XM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us all on Bluesky, which is kind of like Twitter, but for people who don't think things should be named after Nazis. We're also hanging out on our own Discord server. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of [e-mail].

[Richard Ladle]

SA.