Pop Culture Creatures

Agaporomorphus colberti, a diving beetle from Venezuela, was named by entomologists Quentin Wheeler of Arizona State University and Kelly Miller of the University of New Mexico to honor Stephen Colbert, the satirical host and executive producer of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." Credit: Kelly Miller and Quentin Wheeler -

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Astronomers have for years named asteroids after pop icons. There is asteroid Clapton, asteroid Zappa, and rocks named for each of the Fab Four (Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, too).

Biologists also like to do this (Obama has his lichen). Recently comedian Stephen Colbert was honored by scientists who named a diving beetle Agaporomorphus colbert (looks like a cockroach, doesn't it?).

Frankly, we passed on this story when the press release came out last week because a) lots of bugs get found, b) many get named for famous people, c) too many things have been named for Colbert, and d) this one wasn't as funny as the three slime-mold beetles named A. bushi, A. cheneyi and A. rumsfeldi during the heydays of the last administration.

Meanwhile, Stephanie Pulford has created a cool list of other creatures named for interesting and offbeat people (and cool concepts) that you might not have heard of, such as the Hugh Hefner Bunny, the The Theory of Relativity fly and the The Monty Python.