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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rhinogradentia | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinogradentia | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:31:01.299956+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Publication history == Steiner's books as Stümpke have been translated into other languages, sometimes crediting other names based on the country of publication. "Harald Stümpke", "Massimo Pandolfi", "Hararuto Shutyunpuke", and "Karl D. S. Geeste" are pseudonyms. Translator names are real.
Stümpke, Harald (1957). Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag. ISBN 3-437-30083-0. OCLC 65616734. Stümpke, Harald (1962). Anatomie et Biologie des Rhinogrades — Un Nouvel Ordre de Mammifères (Trans. Robert Weill). Paris: Masson. ISBN 978-2-10-005449-7. OCLC 46829688. Stümpke, Harald (1967). The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades (Trans. Leigh Chadwick). Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press. OCLC 436148. Pandolfi, Massimo (1992). I Rinogradi di Harald Stümpke e la zoologia fantastica (Trans. Achaz von Hardenberg). Padua: Franco Muzzio. ISBN 88-7021-485-0. OCLC 875787215. Shutyunpuke, Hararuto (1997). Bikōri: atarashiku-hakken-sareta-honyūrui-no-kōzō-to-seikatsu. Tokyo: Hakuhinsha. ISBN 4-938706-19-9. OCLC 76500640. Geeste, Karl D. S. (1988). Stümpke's Rhinogradentia: Versuch einer Analyse. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag. ISBN 3-437-30597-2. OCLC 28345723.
== Legacy ==
Rhinogradentia is considered one of the best known biological hoaxes and scientific jokes and Steiner's pseudonymous works on the subject continue to be reprinted and translated. The first edition did not explicitly state that it was a hoax. Following the publication of the French translation, George Gaylord Simpson wrote a seemingly serious review which extended the hoax in a 1963 issue of the journal Science, taking issue with the way Stümpke named the animals as "criminal violations of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature". Simpson also noted that Stümpke neglected to include an unrelated mathematical concept, a "rotated matrix". Since the book's original publication several scientists and publishers have written about Rhinogradentia as though Steiner's account were true, though it is unclear how many of those who continued and popularized the joke did so intentionally. Wulf Ankle wrote that the order "is not a poetic invention, but has really lived". Rolf Siewing's Zoology Primer lists them as an order of mammal, noting that their existence is doubted. Erich von Holst celebrated the discovery of "a completely new animal world". Timothy E. Lawlor's widely read textbook Handbook to the Orders and Families of Living Mammals includes an entry for Rhinogradentia that does not acknowledge its fictional nature. The East German Liberal-Demokratische Zeitung took note of the nuclear demise of the rhinogrades, writing that they would still be alive "had we, the peaceable powers, managed in time to implement widespread disarmament and prohibit the production and testing of nuclear weapons."
Prior to the publication of Leigh Chadwick's English translation, an abbreviated version ran in the April 1967 edition of Natural History, a magazine published by the American Museum of Natural History. It comprised material from the book's introduction, first chapter, selected descriptions of genera, and the epilogue, and was presented as the lead story, without qualification, by the normally serious publication. The following month, The New York Times ran a story about the snouters on the front page, based on the Natural History article. According to the magazine's editorial director, they had "received more than 100 letters and telegraphs about the snouters, most of them from people who forgot that the article was published on April Fool's Day." Natural History printed several letters to the editor in its June–July issue, and conveyed to the Times the content of several more, ranging from skeptical to fascinated and continuations of the joke. One reader, entomologist Alice Gray, expressed thanks for the article, which enabled her family to identify an animal-shaped metal bracelet from the South Pacific as having been modeled after a "Hoop Snouter", and included a drawing to preserve the record because, she said, it had been melted down with some toy soldiers and a spoon by a young cousin with a new casting set. Decades later, papers are still published purporting to continue Stümpke's research or otherwise paying homage to Steiner's hoax. In a 2004 paper in the Russian Journal of Marine Biology, authors Kashkina & Bukashkina claim to have discovered two new marine genera: Dendronasus and an as yet unnamed parasitic taxon. The Max Planck Institute for Limnology announced a new species discovered in the Großer Plöner See. On April Fools' Day in 2012, the National Museum of Natural History in France announced the discovery of a wood-eating termite-like genus, Nasoperferator, with a rotating nose resembling a drill. Rhinogradentia has been included in a number of museum exhibitions and collections. The National Museum of Natural History's Nasoperferator announcement was accompanied by a two-month exhibit honoring the animals, featuring purported stuffed specimens in its gallery of extinct species. Mock taxidermies of rhinogrades have also been included in an exhibit at the Musée d'ethnographie de Neuchâtel, and in the permanent collections of the Musée zoologique de la ville de Strasbourg and the Salzburg Haus der Natur. Three real species have been named after Steiner and Stümpke: Rhinogradentia steineri, a snout moth, Hyorhinomys stuempkei, a shrew rat also known as the Sulawesi snouter, and Tateomys rhinogradoides, the Tate's shrew rat.
== See also == Caminalcules, another fictional group of animals introduced as a tool for understanding phylogenetics Codex Seraphinianus Eoörnis pterovelox gobiensis – an older biological hoax, a fictional bird Fictitious entry Lists of fictional species Pacific Northwest tree octopus
== References ==
== External links ==
Les Rhinogrades (in French)