Aidan Bell, who heads the sustainable building materials company EnviroBuild, paid $25,000 at an auction for the right to officially name a blind, legless amphibian creature that buries its head in the sand Dermophis donaldtrumpi.
The newly discovered species, found in Panama, is a caecilian; its naming rights were auctioned to raise money for the Rainforest Trust, which has protected millions of trees and hundreds of animal species in its commitment to preserve biodiversity. The researchers who discovered the creature have already agreed to use the creature's new name when they publish their find in scientific literature.
Envirobuild even Photoshopped President Donald Trump's hair onto the creature to make its point. The resemblance, it seems, is uncanny.
Envirobuild.
Bell said the creature's ability to bury its head in the sand is not unlike to Trump's approach to climate change.
“It is the perfect name,” Bell toldThe Guardian. “Caecilian is taken from the Latin caecus,meaning ‘blind’, perfectly mirroring the strategic vision President Trump has consistently shown towards climate change.”
People seem pretty amused by this new creature and the man who inspired its name.
Chris Redston, the executive director of Rainforest Trust UK, says the caecilian is particularly vulnerable to climate change and is in danger of becoming extinct due to president's disregard for the consensus of the scientific community.
“Protecting the world’s remaining rainforests is acknowledged as one of the most effective ways to mitigate climate change, yet every day nearly 70,000 acres of rainforest are destroyed forever," he said. "This destruction is not only one of the main causes of climate change, but it is also having a devastating impact on endangered wildlife, indigenous communities and the planet’s weather patterns.”
The president's attitude toward climate change has been well documented. He has claimed that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
The president's tweets---both past and present---indicate that he believes climate change is little more than a conspiracy.
The White House has not commented on the creature named after a man who would write those tweets.
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