The scientific name for the wonderpus is Wonderpus photogenicus From work that will soon be published by Hochberg, Norman, Finn.

That's a great name!

As long as this thread has wonderpus fans' attention, anyone have any ideas on what I should do with http://wonderp.us/ ?

The scientific name for the wonderpus is Wonderpus photogenicus From work that will soon be published by Hochberg, Norman, Finn.

I love it!!

J

Oh good!:grin: That's absolutely peachy news!

What about the spelling? Its quite often written as 'wunderpus' too

Hmm. Hate to be on the off-side, but it seems rather "kitch-ey" doesn't it? I think Steve Irwin had more influence on the scientific community than we gave him credit for.

Not necessarily, people have been creative with names for a while. The name made it through the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and Hochberg et al.'s reviewers; and I suspect Irwin didn't have much effect on either :)

I don't know if that says something good about the scientific world, or something bad. You are correct in the influence of Irwin on the naming though.

Phunny. I just did a blog post about anomalous binomials. Updated the post with this new one. Check it out (http://cephalopodcast.com/blog/2006/12/22/curiosities-of-biological-nomenclature/). Thanks.

Or go directly to the source, Mark Issak, to find evidence of more taxonomic humor:
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy.html :lol:

I finally dug up the actual paper (http://www.mapress.com/mr/content/v26/2006f/n3p140.pdf), and confirmed that the official name is actually Wunderpus photogenicus. Just to clear up any confusion.

Now the groundwork has been laid for Notoctopus norsepia!

:smile:

Noto meaning southern - it's a simple southern octopus. I had thought about this years back, wanting to create Notoctopus, Nonoctopus, Noroctopus ... but thought it a frivolous.