Have you ever wanted to give a species its scientific name? Today's your chance!

All species that are described receive a scientific name, often called a binominal name. The binominal name refers to the two parts of the name, where the first is always the name of the genus, followed by the name for the species. As you're probably already aware of, the scientific name is written in Latin, and was made into a system by the famous botanist Carl Linnaeus, even tough some people used a version of it before he made it common.

There are no requirements as to what a species' name can be, but they are often given by a characteristics of the species. For example, there are plants with the species name oppositifolia, which indicates that these plants have leaves that are on the opposite side of them stem from each other. However, this is not a requirement, and often the scientific species name is used to give acknowledgements to the person who found it, or who has worked extensively with the species. An example of this is the Lepidochelys kempii, a sea turtle that was first sent in to the taxonomists at Harvard by a guy named Richard Moore Kemp. This awarded him with both the latin species name kempii, and the popular name Kemp's ridley sea turtle.

Lepidochelys kempii. This is the world's most endangered species of sea turtle. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region, posted with CC BY 2.0.

The naming can also be a lot more informal, such as the moth Neopalpa donaldtrumpi that got named after the US president due to its yellow hairs. Sometimes the naming rights are also up for sale, and today you have the chance to name a species exactly what you want if you got enough cash ready.

Auction to name a species

So if you have ever dreamed of naming a species, but don't have time to discover one, now is one of these rare chances. The non-profit conservation group Rainforest Trust has teamed up with taxonomist to sell the naming rights to 12 different South-American species to the highest bidder. The money from the auction will be used to buy land where these new species are found, giving them legal protection against most human activities.

The minimum bid for each species is $10,000, so this is not really something that most people can afford. You can bid on Freeman's auction website, and it's ending later today.

The species up for auction are some cool ones, including 4 species of orchid, 6 amphibians, a forest mouse, and a species of ant that has been found to have the fastest movement ever recorded in the animal kingdom. The latter claim is based on the auction's website, and I don't have a scientific article to back it up, so take it with a grain of salt.

I doubt most of us can afford to buy the naming right to either of these species, especially in today's crypto market. I have no idea how high the bids will go before the auction ends later tonight, but I have a feeling that it will be a lot higher than the $10,000 starting bid.

Thanks for reading my blog post!

What would you name one of these species if you had the chance?