GOTTA CATCH THEM ALL!

Filipino Biologist Discovers Species of Cockroach name after Pokemon

When we were young, most of us were fans of the long-running anime “Pokemon”. The 2000s were marked with children singing the theme song, buying collectible figurines and cards of species like Pikachu, Squirtle, and Jigglypuff, but it remained a fictional universe, only to be seen and not to be experienced.

But the most unlikely insect is bringing Pokemon to our universe. A cockroach, discovered in a Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore by a Filipino-led team of biologists, has been named “Nocticola pheromosa”, a homage to a Pokemon named Pheromosa.

ART: AMANDA STINSON