Cult Australian Rock band TISM from Melbourne, Victoria has been honoured with a new species of African Turtle named in their honour.
Known as Cycloderma tismorum Hoser, 2021, the species was formally named on 16 August 2021 in a two volume monograph on the world's turtles.
Published by Raymond Hoser, the massive scientific work, named 35 new species of turtles from all over the world, including the African soft-shelled species Cycloderma tismorum Hoser, 2021 from Tanzania.
In the etymology, Hoser wrote:
Cycloderma tismorum sp. nov. is named in honour of the Australian Alternative Rock Band, TISM.
TISM (an acronym of This Is Serious Mum) were a seven-piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group was formed on 30 December 1982 by vocalist/drummer Humphrey B. Flaubert, bassist/vocalist Jock Cheese and keyboardist/vocalist Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun, and enjoyed a large underground/independent following. Also playing in the band was Jock Paull, now deceased. Their third album, Machiavelli and the Four Seasons, reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995.
In Africa it is commonly said that those Africans who live south of the Zambezi River (e.g. South Africa) do not have the same sense of rhythm and music making of those further north and so it is appropriate that a species from north of the Zambezi River be named in honour of a group of people with rhythm.
The naming of the African Turtle after the Melbourne band TISM has followed on from an earlier discovery in which TISM guitarist Jock Paull was also honoured with a genus of North American Snake named in his honour.
Paull, was one of the famous masked singers in the 1990’s Melbourne band TISM.
He also performed numerous services to wildlife conservation in Australia, for which he is not as well known.
Paull has since died of lung cancer (9 April 2008) and is survived by his long-time girlfriend and now (2021) adult child who can still be seen at rock venues across Melbourne.
Both also live in Melbourne’s south-east, where they are revered as living treasures.
As already metnioned above, TISM (an acronym of the phrase This Is Serious Mum) were a seven-piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. They grew a huge cult following which persists to this day (2021), with a revival of interest in the band coinciding with the Covid-19 lockdowns in Melbourne.
They always appeared with heads covered or wearing masks, so that their true identity would not be revealed to the public at large.
The group was formed on 30 December 1982 by vocalist/drummer Humphrey B. Flaubert, bassist/vocalist Jock Cheese and keyboardist/vocalist Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun.
Their third album, Machiavelli and the Four Seasons, reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995 and still generates a huge playlist audience via online platforms.
The genus of snake named in honour of Paull, Jockpaullus Hoser, 2012, is a divergent genus, associated with Rhadinaea Cope, 1863.
As part of a global audit of the world’s snakes at the genus level, leading reptile expert, taxonomist and scientist Raymond Hoser identified this previously unnamed genus of snakes for the first time in the early 2000’s.
However, Hoser, better known as the Snakeman, who also runs the Reptile Party business in Melbourne was so busy it took him nearly a decade to publish his big paper that named the genus in honour of Paull.
Raymond Hoser, has discovered and named more species and genera of snake than anyone else alive.
He also named the genus Brucerogersus Hoser, 2012 in honour of Bruce Rogers, one of Australia’s leading Didgeridoo makers and players in another major scientific paper published in 2012. Rogers of Kangaroo Ground on the northern edge of Melbourne also died of cancer in 2016. That genus of snakes is a divergent group of North American Garter Snakes.
Raymond Hoser’s live reptiles have featured in a number of well-known music videos of Australian artists. He supplied the large Goanna Lizards used the clip for Great Southern Land, by Icehouse, featuring Iva Davies.
The clip was filmed in a disused quarry at Terrey Hills on the northern edge of Sydney, Australia.
Snakeman's crocodiles regularly appear on TV and music videos, adverts, etc, as does his venomous and non venomous snakes.
BOXBOY (real name, Harrison Richard Wain) a music icon of recent years, has used Snakeman Raymond Hoser's snakes a number of times when making his video clips in Melbourne, Victoria and some of this material can be found on Instagram. Another species of turtle Cuora boxboyi Hoser, 2021 was also discovered and named by Hoser in his big 2 volume monograph at the same time the TISM species was named.
That animal, appropriately known to locals as "the box turtle", occurs in Indonesia.
Raymond Hoser's famous reptile parties have been less frequently seen in 2021 as a result of Covid-19 lockdowns.
The banning of public gatherings has meant that outdoor events with reptile shows, school incursions and even private reptile parties have been outlawed for much of the year in a bid to control covid-19.
While reptile parties are still regularly booked by Hoser and his dedicated team of conservationists, most have had to be cancelled in days prior to planned events due to ongoing government demands and restrictions tied in with the Coronavuirus pandemic.
