why when they find a new animal or body part do they give it a new?

Question

extran name, intead of a serial number

Answer 1

Well, there are already about 1.5 million organisms (species) that have been identified, and there are an estimated 4-40 million (this includes bacteria to deep-sea organisms) additional ones that still waiting to be identified. That doesn't count all the body parts of each.

Now if you were to take a biology test, would you rather see the question "How does a Marianas trench sea monkey differ from an Arctic Ocean gammarid shrimp?" or "How does species 70,035,702 differ from species 72,057,273?" There's just something easier to remember about names!

(BTW, with fish, they are given numbers until they receive an "official" name - that why a pleco might be designated as L255 (L for the family Loracidae, 255 for the consecutive number of species that have been found - this is now called a Spotted Medusa Bristlenose plecostomous: http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/profiles/197.htm )

Answer 2

There is more in a name than a serial no