Saving Spiders: Celebrities & the cult of Arachne

One has to have a certain sense of fun in the name-game of the scientific world. Spiders have been rather prominent of late, propelled to fame by zealous zoologists keen to preserve them. The latest in this line, according to the English Daily Telegraph (Sep 7) is the recently discovered Heteropoda davidbowie, a striking, richly yellow creature unique to Malaysia. Presumably spider boffin Peter Jäger had David Bowie’s arachnid-mad Glass Spider Tour from 1987, and the album preceding that from 1972, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in mind. Given that he has discovered some 200 species of spiders in the past decade, other celebrities will be at risk from Jäger’s eagerness to publicise and please the Arachnid world.

The Bowie-named beast is by no means the first in this process of linking celebrity with taxonomy. Arachnologists have been particularly busy on that score. Orson Welles has an entire genus of the giant Hawaiian linyphiid spiders to his name, featuring matters thespian and Shakespearean (Orsonwelles Othello and Orsonwelles macbeth, for instance). The Stasimopus mandelai is forever marked by the South African statesman whose name it bears.

Neil Young and talk show satirist Stephen Colbert have been similarly blessed in recent times, the latter feeling initially left out by the biological name of the former, Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi. ‘Guess what, Neil?’ he crooned on The Colbert Report last year. ‘What goes around, lays eggs around’ (NY Daily News, Aug 1, 2008). Some might see it as appropriate that the Aptostichus stephencolberti is, in fact, a trapdoor spider resident in California. On interviewing zoologist Jason Bond by phone on June 24, Colbert could barely contain himself. ‘So tell me about my spider. Does it shoot poison darts? Does it lay eggs in your ears?’ As it turns out, the sister species of Colbert’s arachnid namesake has been named after Angelina Jolie (sans Brad, it would seem), though experts are divided on whether that species is actually different.

Biologists such as Bond, who seem to throw celebrity names at spiders like taxonomic confetti, do so to keep public awareness piqued. It is, however, doubtful whether there is any true effect in the gesture, other than, perhaps, a brief appearance in print, media and the blogosphere. The public generally reacts to spiders with degrees of indifference or fear. Not everyone has trust that these eight-legged wonders might have the charismatic intelligence of E. B. White’s Charlotte in the 1952 children’s classic, or appreciate the Greek mythology behind Arachne, the brilliant weaver condemned by Athena’s jealousy of her talent and pluck. Prolific, mass-murdering spiders that might descend on a hapless town at any moment in the manner of Eight Legged Freaks, tends to be more popular.

These publicising moves may make little difference in the end to the humble arachnid. Bond may feel that naming an animal after someone is a ‘permanent’ feature, but their existence is certainly not. Environmental degradation is taking its toll on an ever increasing range of species. More concrete measures beyond taxonomy will have to be undertaken.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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