Should we change the name of the Hitler beetle?

The name of a beetle, an insect close to the beetle, is controversial within the scientific community, since it bears the name of Adolf Hitler.

This Slovenian beetle has the scientific name, d‘Anophthalmus hitleri. It was discovered in the 1930s by a great administrator of Adolf Hitler, Oscar Sheibel, an entomologist who wanted to dedicate his discovery to the German dictator to express his “veneration”. But the beetle Anophthalmus hitleri has been found (link in English), for decades, poached by neo-Nazi collectors nostalgic for the Third Reich, to such an extent that it is threatened with extinction.

The insect now finds itself at the heart of a very tense debate between scientists. In fact, some of them are asking for his name to be changed in order to “to erase the commemoration of people who caused countless suffering.”

Except that last January the body which establishes the rules for naming animal species, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, estimated in a journal (link in English) that changing species names for ethical reasons could threaten the stability of scientific names.

A beetle, far from being alone

Especially since the beetle is not the only animal concerned. Also in 1934, a German paleontologist named a prehistoric insect Rochlingia hitleri. As for Benito Mussolini, he was entitled to his butterfly name, Hypopta mussolini. Sometimes names are not chosen to be homages at all. For example, in 2018, a British company paid $25,000 to name a blind burrowing amphibian named, Dermophis donaldtrumpiin order to illustrate the blindness of the former American president, Donald Trump, vis-à-vis climate change.

In any case, this scientific controversy should be resolved by a vote at a congress in the summer of 2024 on this possibility. The beetle only has to cross its wings for a name a little less connoting genocides and crimes against humanity to be granted to it, since as the Portuguese botanist Estrela Figueiredo says, “In what other area of ​​human activity do we still find names linked to Hitler? Scientific codes must change and adapt, like the rest of society.”