mossworm:

“Wow, you really found a new species?”

People outside of invertebrate science are often surprised to find that students in their twenties have named new species already but there are just so many bugs/worms/etc that it’s not even remotely difficult to find them if you really want to, I promise.

My boss has found about 70 new species of wasp over this summer and he doesn’t have time to name them so they’re just going to get stored away until someone has the attention span to write them all up and publish. People give each other new species as a friendly gesture. There really are just that many animals.