Animal Lover King Charles III Has an Endangered Species Named After Him
King Charles III is just like the rest of the royal family in at least one way — he is a dedicated dog owner. His love for animals extends beyond his pets, though. He’s obsessed with other animals, and Charles even has an endangered species named after him.
King Charles loves animals and is particularly obsessed with two kinds
Household pets — he and Camilla Parker Bowles own two Jack Russells — aren’t the only animals Charles has an affinity for. The royal coat of arms includes a lion and unicorn, but those species don’t capture the king’s fancy like two other animals.
Prince William once revealed Charles’ obsession with squirrels, and the king didn’t deny it. He lets the squirrels that roam the royal family’s Scottish estate into the house, and he sometimes leaves nuts in his jacket pockets for them to find.
The king also possesses a deep knowledge of and love for chickens. He knows the various breeds and how to rear them.
Charles the animal lover has an endangered species named after him, which stems from yet another one of his passions.
Charles has an endangered frog species named after him
King Charles has a passion for conservation. He converted his Aston Martin sports car to run on wine instead of gasoline. He fights against climate change and once gave shoutouts to Prince William and Prince Harry for their efforts to do the same. Protecting the rainforest is one of Charles’ focuses in terms of saving the environment. It led to scientists naming a frog species after him.
Scientists named a newly discovered and endangered Ecuadorian frog Hyloscirtus princecharlesi in 2012, aka the (at the time) Prince Charles stream treefrog. The rare species lives in the cloud forest in a corner of Ecuador between 2,720 and 2,794 meters above sea level, per iNaturalist U.K.
Charles had the endangered frog species named after him the year after he became president of the World Wildlife Fund U.K. in 2011.
The king’s coronation celebration could include a rare English animal that is parasitic pest in the United States
Charles clearly has a passion for animals and the environment, but his coronation celebration could include a parasitic fish from the U.S.
Lamprey pies have been a staple of formal royal celebrations for centuries, but the fish in the dish remains a protected species in the U.K. The fish once thrived in English waterways, but industrialization nearly wiped them out. It seems the fish migrated to the Great Lakes, where the parasitic invasive species decimated native fisheries.
So the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a joint U.S. and Canadian entity that “coordinates fisheries research, controls the lamprey population, and facilitates cooperative fishery management,” will ship its unwanted fish to the U.K. for Charles’ coronation celebration. The last time the GLFC sent a batch of eel-like lampreys to England was for a 2015 ceremony celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
The king banned some food from Buckingham Palace. The lamprey may not be one, but it seems safe to say the rare treefrog species named after Charles will never come close to the table.
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