Blind amphibian named after Trump for his stance on climate change

LONDON: A newly discovered blind amphibian from Panama is set to be named after Donald Trump in recognition of the US president’s stance on climate change, according to a media report.

Envirobuild, a Uk-based sustainable building materials company, announced on Tuesday that it would be using ‘Dermophis donaldtrumpi’ as the name for the amphibian with no legs and poor eyesight.

The company says the name still will need to undergo peer review, but that other animals have been named after presidents in the past.

The name was chosen by Aidan Bell, the boss of the firm which paid thousands at an auction for the right, The Guardian reported.

Trump in June last year withdrew the US from the Paris climate change agreement, which commits countries to keeping a limit on rising global temperatures.

The small creature is blind and has an ability to bury its head in the ground. These features Bell said match the US leader’s opinion on climate change.

The company said Trump’s was “the perfect name” for the limbless animal.

The Panamanian underground amphibians are particularly vulnerable to global warming.

Dermophis donaldtrumpi, 10 centimetres in length and belonging to group of snakelike animals called caecilians, was recently found in Panama by a group of scientists.

Its naming rights were auctioned off in a fundraiser for Rainforest Trust, a nonprofit rainforest conservation organisation, the report said.

The winning bid of $34,478 was made by Bell, the head of a Uk-based sustainable building materials company called Envirobuild.

“It is the perfect name,” Bell said. “Caecilian is taken from the Latin caecus, meaning ‘blind’, perfectly mirroring the strategic vision President Trump has consistently shown towards climate change,” he said.

Bell said Trump’s worldview resembled a caecilian’s, whose eyes can only detect light and dark.

“Capable of seeing the world only in black and white. Donald Trump has claimed that climate change is a hoax by the Chinese,” he added.

The world’s leading scientists agree that climate change is primarily humaninduced.

But Trump, whose administration has consistently pursued a pro-fossil fuels agenda, has accused those scientists of having a “political agenda” and cast doubt on whether humans were responsible for the Earth’s rising temperatures.