Reminds me of certain names that you get from bacterial genomics. Traditionally genes in bacteria are named by a three letter code for the name of the pathway, plus a letter for which gene it is – for example hisA for the first gene in the histidine pathway. But there are such combinations like phoQ and even fucK
I am glad ants don’t have any silly names. 
And here I’d always thought Homo erectus was the pinnacle of such eight-year-old humor. I am delighted to stand corrected.
I love ant names! They are so practical. Little black ant, crazy ant, red pavement ant, big-headed ant…
Common names.
http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/17332/Ants-taxonomic-names-weird-offensive-amusing-ones for some taxonomy ones.
I’ve always liked the dog-latin names for ants too. Your link’s got a perfect example - Pheidole bigote, the Mexican Mustache ant!
And it’s hard to beat Tyrannomyrmex rex! I didn’t know that one.
Yeah, it is amusing. 
BTW, I run that ant forum.
Nice forum! I used to do work for the Academy of Natural Sciences, and my spouse has degrees in entomology and plant pathology, so we have more than a few entomologist friends.
Have you read John Crompton’s “Ways of the Ant?” It’s terribly dated, but I like all of Crompton’s natural history books.
I am not familiar with that, but don’t read that many books. I do have that huge The Ants book!
Heh. I’m currently studying (there’s no exact English translation, but it’s something akin to) environmental care and so I’ve been learning hundreds of plants and animals. When you spend enough time staring at different species and their names, you start to snicker at a lot of stupid things.
Turdus pallidus (Pale Thrush) was really funny to me. The funniness of the genus name is probably obvious, but on top of that, “palli” refers to balls in Finnish. I know, this is the humor of a first-grader, but that’s how low you sink when you’re tired enough.
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