Snake Men by Zach St. George

Regular readers of Tet Zoo will – I hope – be familiar with taxonomic vandalism… Put simply, this is the phenomenon whereby rebellious individuals, typically working outside of institutional academia, seek to formally name or rename the organisms they’re interested in, most usually by way of self-published works that have a decidedly ‘non-standard’ feel and approach. I’ve published on this subject, not just at Tet Zoo (here) but also in both the semi-technical literature (Naish 2025) and as a contributor to technical cases that seek to minimise or negate the acts of specific vandals (Rhodin et al. 2015).Among those organisms most frequently affected by taxonomic vandalism are reptiles, in particular those of Australasia. And you may know already that one of the most active of the various battlefields is that involving one Mr Raymond Hoser, his work building on that of his predecessors, among them Richard Wells and Ross Wellington. So interesting and frighteningly esoteric are these…