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Those of you that fit within the venn diagram of “spider lover” and “Monster Hunter lover” will be very excited to hear about the newly discovered Otacilia khezu.
If there’s one thing that can be said about those in the sciences that study animals, it’s that they’re nerds. Seriously, there’s a whole Wikipedia page on organisms named after works of fiction, with a section dedicated to ones just named after games (shoutout to Dicranocentrus pikachu). And as spotted by a user on the Monster Hunter subreddit, a brand new species of eyeless spider has just been discovered in China, and it’s been named after a monster from the classic Capcom series. The Otacilia khezu, which you can see in detail here (obvious arachnophobia warning if you do click through) is named after Monster Hunter’s Khezu, a type of flying wyvern whose eyes have greatly receded, making it look like they are essentially eyeless.
You can easily see where this new spider gets its namesake from then, and the data journal linked above isn’t shy about making note of its Monster Hunter origins (the Otacilia part is just the genus of araneomorph spiders, i.e., that part is for all the smarty pants out there who know big fancy Latin words like that). Someone also noticed on Twitter that the same person who named this particular spider has done this before with other organisms, including a couple of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure references (Funny Valentine and Gryo Zeppeli), as well as another Monster Hunter reference in the form of the genus “Rathalos,” another classic monster from the series.
While this isn’t quite the same as a new monster reveal, Capcom hasn’t been shy about showing off the latest entry in the series Monster Hunter Wilds. The upcoming game got a look-in at Summer Game Fest earlier this month, along with the promise of a playable demo further down the line. Plus our own Alex got to go hands-on with the game, and came away from it feeling very impressed.