The legendary broadcaster and naturalist is getting a new beetle named after him that was recently discovered in Indonesia.
The Trigonopterus attenboroughi was named by Alexander Riedel, who discovered the beetle along with 97 others on the islands of Java, Bali and Lombok in Indonesia.
It measures about 2.14mm, and Riedel said that it was the easiest to name, as he had been inspired from watching the Life on Earth series of documentaries many years ago, and had been rewatching them with his daughter.
Dr Riedel, who works at the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany said that those works set the bar for documentaries about nature: "Sir David Attenborough has an academic quality which I feel is missing from most productions today".
The rest of the species were named after the areas in which they were found, making the attenboroughi the only one to be named after a person. Attenborough has also had a few other new discoveries named after him, including a flesh-eating plant that can devour rats in the Philippines and a goblin spider found on an island off the coast of Australia, so he now has a beetle to add to that lovely collection.
Via The Independent
