David Bowie And The Spiders From Malaysia

By Ben Liew  •  in News
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No, David Bowie’s not coming to Malaysia. Sorry to disappoint all you glam rockers out there. But the egnimatic singer now has a Malaysian spider named after him. Malaysia boleh, yeah?

Now we know what you’re thinking. How can anyone name a spider after a gender-bender rock n roll star? Unless of course that particular spider has an affinity with singing cosmic superheros. Well, if Monty Python star John Cleese can have a lemur named after him, then why not?

German spider specialist Peter Jaeger, who has found 200 new species of arachnids in a decade (Ed-worst job in the world), is responsible for discovering this new species which he has dubbed Heteropoda Davidbowie. He told the Observer newspaper he named the new species after Bowie — whose proto-punk concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a huge hit in 1972 — because he wanted to raise awareness about the discovery.

According to Jaeger, most of the species he has uncovered are endangered. “It is working against time,” he said. “We are also quickly losing genetic resources that have evolved over more than 300 million years.” (source: cbcnews.ca)

Bowie, who also embarked on a concert circuit in 1987 called the Glass Spider Tour, has yet to react to the news. Although we’re sure he’ll feel like a ‘Space Oddity’ when he sees how the 8-legged bugger looks like…

So where were the Spiders from Mars?