And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the
field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to
see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every
living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names
to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of
the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for
him. Genesis 2:19-20 So how many species did Adam name? Well, if
you believe the Genesis story, "every living creature" was
directly and immediately created by God in that failed
matchmaking attempt. God hoped that one of them (the bot fly
maybe) would strike Adam's fancy, but none of them did. Shucks!
So God created Eve instead. In the process, though, Adam named
all of the species that God created. And he did it in a single
afternoon. So why is it taking us so long? Thousands of
biologists have been working for for nearly 350 years, yet they
still haven't named them all. About ten days ago, the Integrated
Taxonomic Information System (IT