Cool looking beetle named for Stephen Colbert

William Atkins
Thursday, 07 May 2009 17:49

Science - Biology

Only a few weeks ago Stephen Colbert, of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” had a high-tech, space-orbiting treadmill named for him on the Space Station. Now, two American scientists have named a diving beetle for him. What is way cooler than that?


ITwire reported on April 16, 2009 that the Space Station’s Treadmill-2 would be named after Colbert in the article “Name of Space Station Node 3 surprise to Stephen Colbert.”

Colbert, the host of The Colbert Report on TV station Comedy Central, was originally hoping to have the new Node 3 on the International Space Station named after him, but that fell through after NASA decided to name it Tranquility, to honor the first manned landing on the Moon.

U.S. entomologists (bug people) Quentin Wheeler, from Arizona State University, and Kelly Miller, from the University of New Mexico, sent Colbert a birthday card on his 45-year-old birthday (May 13th) with the riddle: “What has six legs and is way cooler than a spider?”

The riddle was in reference to his plea for the scientific community to name something after him that is more “cool” than a spider.

And, of course, a diving beetle is way more coler than a spider. Just ask any beetle!

The new name for the diving beetle is Agaporomorphus colberti. The species is from Venezuela.

It’s official, too! Check out page two for the scientific paper describing the new name for this diving beetle, all under the name of Colbert.