In 2008, a giant spider with lots of long blonde locks not unlike David Bowie’s was named Heteropoda davidbowie after the late songwriter, according to The Guardian. Instead of spinning a web like many spider species, this type of “huntsman” spider — as you might guess — hunts for smaller insects, attacking its prey with its venom (via Atlas Obscura). Per The Guardian, this spider was endangered as of 2009, and the German scientist who named it, Peter Jäger, did so in order to raise awareness about the spider’s existence in the hopes that it would help it survive.
According to Atlas Obscura, the Malaysian spider was actually misidentified pre-2008 as a similar-looking spider, the Heteropoda javana. It wasn’t until one of Jäger’s colleagues, who was keeping the Bowie spider as a pet, sent it to him for identification that he realized there were subtle differences between the two species — namely that the Bowie spider was (of course) more colorful.
