Not just statues: Australia’s battle to rename the natural world, including a blind beetle called Hitler

Botanists are calling on colleagues to change the rules to stop plants and animals being named after the worst of humans, reports Stephen Evans

The ‘Anophthalmus hitleri’, named after the Nazi leader (Natural History Museum: Coleoptera Section/CC BY 2.0)

It’s a dilemma taxing some fine scientific minds: should new species of plants and animals be named after the human perpetrators of evil deeds? The statues to slavers may have fallen, but should the names of the men who traded in humans live on in botany?

The botanists who decide on the names of new species in Australia think not. These taxonomists (as the categorisers of new species are called) are appealing to their colleagues around the world to have the international rules changed.

You see the problem: there is, for example, a rare Slovenian beetle called Anophthalmus hitleri, named after Adolf Hitler in 1933 (though the beetle is apparently in danger of extinction because so many neo-Nazis seek it as a kind of memento).