While searching for David Bowie and his relation to spiders, I was astounded to find all sorts of images about an actual spider species- Heteropoda davidbowie.

Apparently the spider was named after the taxonomists noted that the face looked very much like Bowie’s makeup. Furthermore, the researchers loved how Bowie weaved in spiders into his works, such as the song Glass Spider and his back-up band The Spiders from Mars.

Throughout most of my blog I have focused on the way actual science- especially insects and invertebrates- has influenced the science fiction. This scenario is the polar opposite in which a spider was named after a famous SF artist. The categorization of this spider goes to show how much SF has permeated our society. I find it vastly ironic that something that is “made-up” in the first place becomes real in a sense through actual science.

URLs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteropoda_davidbowie (Info + image)