This January, a new spider was named from southern China.
Its name?
Hotwheels sisyphus.
Hotwheels was described on Jan. 18 by Bo Liu and Feng Zhang in the journal ZooKeys. The spider is distinct from all other spiders due to a bunch of arthropod anatomical jargon that is lost on anyone without a vested interest in arachnology
The most immediately striking aspect of Hotwheels is the name. Which is to say, why would anyone possibly want to name a spider Hotwheels?
Officially, the name Hotwheels is named for the shape of its palpi – the limb-like appendages directly adjacent to the mandibles. The palpi, as per Liu and Zhang in the animal’s description, allegedly “resembles a Hot Wheels track.”
Meanwhile, the species name “sisyphus” derives from the palpi’s circular shape, which are apparently “like Sisyphus’s cyclic mission.”
Collectively, it seems like a remarkably convoluted way of naming a spider. And frankly, it comes off largely as an incredibly tenuous post-hoc justification to give a spider an eccentric name.
To further compound this, most Riordan student responses to Hotwheels’ name were generally restricted to general confusion if not outright bafflement.
When asked about his opinions on the name, Ean Richardson ’25 could only respond with “Why?”
Otis Tripp Wisehaupt ’25 shared a similar sentiment, with his immediate response being “What?” Though, he later added that he did enjoy the name.
As evidenced by the responses, there isn’t much appeal or interest to be had in the animal itself outside of the initial shock value and absurdity presented by the name, and even the name instills puzzlement more than anything else.
Which again begs the question of why a spider needs to be named after a brand of die-cast cars, especially when such a surreal name could be seen as only delegitimizing the field.
The first potential reason behind such a name is originality. According to the World Spider Catalog, there are 51,908 species of spider. For reference, there are, as per the Journal of Mammology, only 6,495 species of mammals. Ergo, it may be difficult to produce unique scientific names for new spiders on account of the sheer breadth of preexisting names.
Alternatively, there may be a somewhat noble motive behind this.
Biology teacher Colleen O’Rourke – herself a published scientific author – stated that uncharacteristic or deviant names for obscure organisms can “help these simple organisms in the news” and “might draw more attention to ecological and conversational concerns.”
Surprisingly, this exact thing has happened rather recently.
In 2022, Dr. Peter Jäger named a new genus of spider – Bowie – in honor of the late David Bowie’s 75th birthday. Further, he named several dozen new species of Bowie after songs from its namesake’s catalogue, resulting in such wonderful binomials as Bowie letsdance, Bowie withoutyou, and Bowie chinagirl.
According to an article from the Natural History Museum, Jäger did this to raise awareness for the rampant deforestation and pirating threatening Bowie.
While this could be beneficial in attempting to rationalize Hotwheels’ ostensibly absurd name, it’s worth noting that the description itself makes no mention of conservation or outreach surrounding Hotwheels, and regardless, most will have forgotten this spider exists in at most a month or so.
Still, the fact it has received any press attention is far more than the overwhelming majority of new invertebrate species.
And as they say, there’s no such thing as bad press.
