14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at the Purdue University (PU) announced recently that they had some 7 new types of bats to find a name for, as well as one pair of Amazonian turtles, which were just recently discovered. They announced that whoever wanted to have the new species named after him or her could apply for the auction, a move that would guarantee their name would go down in history as immortal.
"There's not very much money to support the kind of work it takes to discover these new species. Money generated by someone who says, 'I'm passionate about the environment, and I'd love to go down in history by having a species of organism named after me,' that's very important to our continued work," says PU professor of forestry and natural resources, John Bickham, who is also the discoverer of several of the new bats. "How many people do you know that have a species named after them?" he asks.
Over the years, similar endeavors met a great deal of success, as universities gathered millions of dollars from giving the name of rich people to various, newly-discovered mammals and birds, as well as to insects and other creatures. The Wildlife Conservation Society received some $650,000 in 2005 from an on-line gambling website, so that they would name a species of monkey after the Internet portal.
In Monaco, some $2 million were gathered at a fish-naming ceremony, with the funds destined to support a conservation program in Indonesia. Scientists worldwide say that they've employed this method of naming species in order to attract attention to the fact that tens and tens of species of creatures disappear from the face of the earth each day.
"We're losing species every minute. People don't really understand the full impact of this," says Bickham. Biologists draw attention to the fact that there is currently an underground crisis going down in the animal kingdom, with countless known species disappearing each day, alongside others that have yet to be discovered.