1. Stephen Colbert\u00a0<\/p>\n
Famous comedian and television host Stephen Colbert has a number of creepy crawlies named after him, including the wasp Aleiodes Colberti<\/a>, the trapdoor spider Aptostichus stephencolberti<\/a>, and the diving beetle the Agaporomorphus colberti<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLast year, Stephen shamelessly asked the science community to name something cooler than a spider<\/a> to honor him,\u201d Arizona State University entomologist Quentin Wheeler, who was involved in the naming of the diving beetle, explained in a statement back in 2009. \u201cHis top choices were a giant ant or a laser lion. While those would be cool species to discover, our research involves beetles, and they are \u2018way cooler\u2019 than a spider any day.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. Queen Victoria<\/p>\n The famous British monarch doesn\u2019t just have animal species named after her. She has a whole genus<\/a> of giant waterlilies<\/a>. Of course, the queen is also referenced in specific animal names, such as the large pigeon<\/a> Goura victoria<\/a> (Victoria crowned pigeon), and the Ornithoptera victoriae (Queen Victoria\u2019s birdwing).\u00a0<\/p>\n 3. Leonardo DiCaprio\u00a0<\/p>\n While some argue that there could have been room for Jack next to Rose at the end of the Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio would have certainly drowned them all if he had climbed aboard with all the species named after him. The American actor inspired the names of the Cameroonian tree Uvariopsis dicaprio<\/a>, the water beetle<\/a> Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi<\/a>, and the frog Phyllonastes dicaprioi<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n 4. Harrison Ford<\/p>\n Indiana Jones is terrified of snakes<\/a>, so he probably wouldn\u2019t be too happy to discover that in 2023 the slithering species Tachymenoides harrisonfordi was named in honor of actor Harrison Ford and his environmental advocacy, among other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThese scientists keep naming critters after me, but it\u2019s always the ones that terrify children. I don\u2019t understand. I spend my free time cross-stitching. I sing lullabies to my basil plants, so they won\u2019t fear the night,\u201d Ford said in a statement. \u201cIn all seriousness, this discovery [of <\/a>Tachymenoides harrisonfordi] is humbling<\/a>. It\u2019s a reminder that there\u2019s still so much to learn about our wild world \u2014 and that humans are one small part of an impossibly vast biosphere.<\/p>\n The aforementioned critters include the spider Calponia harrisonfordi and the ant Pheidole harrisonfordi.<\/p>\n 5. Barack Obama\u00a0<\/p>\n The former president has an entire Wikipedia page<\/a> dedicated to things named after him, including an impressive number of organisms. There is the bee Lasioglossum obamai<\/a>, the spider Spintharus barackobamai<\/a> (which is in the same genus as Spintharus berniesandersi), and the waterbeetle Desmopachria barackobamai<\/a>, among others. Like Queen Victoria, even Obama has a genus named after him, as seen in the (extinct) lizard Obamadon gracilis<\/a>.<\/p>\n 6. David Attenborough<\/p>\n Last but certainly not least, there are a whooping over 50 species<\/a> that carry the name of broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough (though we would argue there should be a few species named specifically after his voice, too). These include the bird Polioptila attenboroughi, the carnivorous plant Nepenthes attenboroughii, and the Bolivian lichen Malmidea attenboroughii.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Ask Us Anything<\/a>, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you\u2019ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you\u2019ve always wanted to know? Ask us<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t 2025 PopSci Best of What\u2019s New<\/p>\n The 50 most important innovations of the year<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n Margherita is a trilingual freelance science writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the Popular Science daily newsletter\ud83d\udca1 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Sometimes it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,5623,44,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-593684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-evergreen","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Giant-waterlily-named-for-Queen-Victoria-Victoria-Boliviana-1.jpg\")
Botanical artist Lucy Smith (left) and Kew Gardens\u2019 scientific and botanical research horticulturalist Carlos Magdalena (right) pose for photographs with the Victoria Boliviana, a new botanical discovery named in honor of Queen Victoria, at Kew Gardens on July 01, 2022 in London, England. Despite specimens sitting in Kew\u2019s Herbarium for 177 years, the waterlily was identified as a previously unrecognized species. Image: Leon Neal \/ Staff \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/male-Calponia-harrisonfordi-spider-named-in-honor-of-harrison-ford.jpg\")
Arachnologist Norman Platnick first described this tiny spider in 1993 and named it after actor Harrison Ford as a thank you for his voice narration work on a documentary for the Natural History Museum in London. Image: Marshal Hedin \/ CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"products](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/best-of-whats-new-2025-HERO.png\")
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