Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mammals/Archive 14

Himalayan shrew and its genus article
Hi, and hope you're well. Under what conditions should the genus and its only species share an article? For example, Soriculus says that the Himalayan shrew (Soriculus nigrescens) is the only extant member of the genus, though other species were once included here and there are also several fossil species included here. Thank you in advanced for your time and attention. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 17:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)


 * If a genus has only one extant and several extinct species, it's not unprecented to have a separate article for the genus, but its also common for there only to be an article about the extant species with the genus being a redirect. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:14, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Basically, if there's enough data that is unique and distinct for multiple articles, then we probably should have multiple articles. If there isn't any available data to have multiples, then we should probably have one. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you both for your swift replies! I'll leave it alone for now; I don't feel confident enough to carry out a merge. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 21:31, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Given the information present, the two articles shouldn't be merged at all. The present situation at the species article was a result of an incomplete split in Sep 2021, where the information on extinct species and related genera remained untouched in the species article. I have now edited both articles to reflect the different scope of each. Loopy30 (talk) 00:07, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks great. Thank you! Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 03:16, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Mogera edit : is this okay ?
part of the intro in a new section "Description", by that I mean moving this to the section "Description" that would be erected :

"Moles in this genus differ from Old World moles in the genus Talpa in having one fewer pairs of lower incisors and in having larger hind premolars in the lower jaw.



Moles of this genus varies in sizes. Kawada (2016) made a morphological revision of the Japanese mountain mole and proposed the actual position of this species (then known as Euroscaptor mizura) in Oreoscaptor. In this study, the author presented and compared morphometrics of ''[O]. mizura with 17 other species of talpids, which included 8 species of the genus Mogera''. Some information from this study on their head-body length and tail length (in millimeters) and their weight (in grams) are presented in the table below.

for your time Gimly24 (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2023 (UTC)


 * First sentence should be cited and "varies in size", not "varies in sizes", but otherwise it looks fine. I'm not sure why you felt like you needed to ask about that addition. SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the quick reply. "Moles of this genus varies in size", it's not said/implied in the study but you see that there is "2 groups" of Mogera (imaizumii, insularis, kanoana and latouchei are much smaller and the larger species : etigo, robusta, tokudae and wogura). The whole paragraph cite Kawada's study. I could remove the first sentence and add a citation after the 2 sentences ([...] which included 8 species of the genus Mogera.
 * I'm not sure why you felt like you needed to ask about that addition
 * I don't know why, thinking of it. Lol. Maybe fear of it being too precise and "copying a study" (by taking a few morphological data informations) was the thing. lol. Gimly24 (talk) 19:39, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "Moles of this genus vary in size" would be most correct. Subject = Moles, so must match verb to the plural noun. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:42, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * yes. Thank you for noting this. I looked it up afterwards on google and depending on the circumstances, one of the two applies. Gimly24 (talk) 19:50, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

✅ page and re-organized the table in the process :) Gimly24 (talk) 20:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Are individual animals page in the WikiProjectMammals ?
Like for example 926F (Spitfire), O-Six, OR-7, etc ?

Are they subject to assessments by WikiProject:Mammals ?

What about repopulations and reintroductions of mammals pages ?

Ex : Repopulation of wolves in California, Repopulation of wolves in Colorado, Repopulation of wolves in Midwestern United States, History of wolves in Yellowstone, Wolf reintroduction, Reintroduction of beavers to Europe, etc

If they are, they should be assessed or at least been given "the project have yet to rate this page"

Thanks. Gimly24 (talk) 02:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)


 * My inclination is to not add WikiProject Mammal banners to individual animals (or breeds) that could fall under a subproject (cats, dogs, equines, cetaceans, primates, rodents, bats). I think most of the editors who participate in WikiProject Dogs are interested in canids in general, so the wolves would be accepted in the scope of that project.


 * I've added WikiProject Mammal banners to newly-created articles I've come across on individual animals and breeds that don't fall under any existing subproject, but I don't think anybody has made a systematic effort to tag all possibly relevant individuals and breeds for WikiProject Mammals. There are articles on individuals (not just mammals) tagged for WikiProject Animals that could be refined to a more precise project.


 * I'm not opposed to tagging individual wolves for WikiProject Mammals (in addition to Dogs), but if individuals are considered in scope, there are a bunch of articles out there that haven't been tagged for any WikiProject (to pick one example, the individual giant panda Bao Bao), and it would be more productive to work on tagging those than adding additional tags for articles that already have some. Plantdrew (talk) 03:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks much for your reply ! I agree with you on the priorization of pages that do not have any projects related/attached to them, like you said as an example Bao Bao. I would suggest giving a Wolf reintroduction & Reintroduction of beavers to Europe the tag for sure as they treats mammals reintroduction (as a general example of mammalian reintroduction]]. I might make a list of some individual animals like Bao Bao, who got no WikiProjects Related tags. To see. :) Gimly24 (talk) 05:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I looked up List of giant pandas &, and i found that, along with Bao Bao, these pandas had either no wikiproject attached or in some, even existing talk pages :
 * Bao Bao
 * Jia Yueyue and Jia Panpan
 * Kang Kang (giant panda)
 * Lan Lan
 * Meng Xiang
 * I will do a large survey of individual animals and update this later. You could find my progress in one of my many (and messy) sandbox. Gimly24 (talk) 05:19, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * , you should use PetScan for this. Here is a search for individual bears that don't have a WikiProject Mammals banner (Category:Individual giant pandas is a subcategory of Category:Individual bears). Note that the search terms are on two different tabs, "Categories" (depth=2, categories=Individual bears) and "Templates&links" (has none of these templates=WikiProject Mammals, use talk pages instead=checked). Plantdrew (talk) 17:12, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Plantdrew Thank you for sharing this asset. It will certainly help. However, as you said in an earlier, most pages on individuals animals have multiples projects related to them. For instance, WikiProject Horse racing covers almost all horses present in the page List of leading Thoroughbred racehorses, but not all. And we said, we'd prioritize those without any wikiprojects.
 * as of now, i found that these pages have no wikiproject and/or talk pages [Edited : see bottom of the page/my next to last edit of this talk page] :
 * Gimly24 (talk) 20:11, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You can modify the Petscan search to exclude articles with other specified WikiProject banners; I went with bears for the example because I'm confident those won't be tagged for cats/dogs/horses (but individual bears might be tagged for a project with a geographic focus). If Petscan is being used to find cats/dogs/horses that aren't tagged for ANY project, I'd certainly set the search criteria to exclude the cat/dog/equine (and horse racing) WikiProject banners. Plantdrew (talk) 20:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You can modify the Petscan search to exclude articles with other specified WikiProject banners; I went with bears for the example because I'm confident those won't be tagged for cats/dogs/horses (but individual bears might be tagged for a project with a geographic focus). If Petscan is being used to find cats/dogs/horses that aren't tagged for ANY project, I'd certainly set the search criteria to exclude the cat/dog/equine (and horse racing) WikiProject banners. Plantdrew (talk) 20:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah, that make much more sense. Yes, it would be way easier that way. Thank you very much, Plantdrew😊 Gimly24 (talk) 21:14, 7 March 2023 (UTC)


 * so i think i'm mostly done, we got here User:Gimly24/sandbox
 * Individual(s) :
 * 5 pandas
 * 4 bears
 * 5 chimpanzees
 * 5 other primates
 * 3 cats
 * 15 dogs
 * around 96 horses
 * 8 individual bovines
 * 1 individual sheep
 * 1 goat & tiger (they are together in a page)
 * 2 killer whales
 * 1 blue whale
 * 8 elephants
 * 2 wolves
 * 9 others individuals animals that are mammals
 * Specific mammal(s) or groups of mammals related (29 pages)
 * Breeds :
 * 17 Cattle
 * 8 goats
 * 10 sheep
 * 1 pony
 * 1 water buffalo
 * 1 wolf-dog
 * 6 dogs
 * 1 pig
 * Others (32 pages)
 * My gawd, was it long
 * Oh, and these three pages should be in this WikiProject ASAP :
 * Eastern Mindanao gymnure
 * Geniohyus
 * Thyrohyrax
 * Thanks a lot to @Plantdrew Gimly24 (talk) 20:40, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a class parameter to WikiProject banner shell, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to WikiProject banner shell, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass WPBannerMeta a new custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:09, 12 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Could you post an example of a page with this ? That's not very clear...
 * Thank you. - Gimly24 (talk) 00:10, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Felid hybrid
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Felid hybrid that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 17:33, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Should Setirostris be moved to common name?
Most mammal species are placed at their common name, but unusually this one is not, as various common names exist. But it should be possible to go with the most widespread one, which appears to be hairy-nosed Freetail Bat. Any thoughts? FunkMonk (talk) 12:02, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There are a fair number of bat species with scientific names as titles. Many bats (and rodents) didn't have any proposed vernacular/common names prior to the publication of Mammal Species of the World. The article on the family Molossidae is titled free-tailed bat, and many species have "free-tailed bat" as part of their title ("Northern freetail bat" is the only article that has "freetail" in the title rather than "free-tailed bat").
 * So "freetail bat" vs. "free-tailed bat" (vs. "freetail-bat" as IUCN has it) is one issue, and "bristle-faced" vs "hairy-nosed" is another. This species was only described in 2008, which I don't think is necessarily enough time for a single vernacular name to have become well-established. One website that comes up prominently in Google searches (for the scientific name as well as "hairy-nosed" and "bristle-faced") uses "bristle-faced free-tailed bat" as a header and "hairy-nosed freetail bat" in running text ("hairynose" would be a parallel construction to "freetail"; using an -ed adjective for one term, but not another is inconsistent). Plantdrew (talk) 21:10, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Rhinoceros subspecies drafts
I am reviewing two drafts on subspecies of rhinoceros, Draft:Indonesian Javan rhinoceros and Draft:Chobe black rhinoceros. Each of these drafts is a two-sentence stub. My question is whether identified subspecies are considered notable ipso facto, or whether they should be left as redirects to the species. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:20, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * If nothing better than that is offered, I don't think they're warranted. It should theoretically be possible to write long enough articles about them that would justify splitting, but those sure aren't that. FunkMonk (talk) 04:43, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The Javan one should be redirected to the species article. With all other groups extinct it is the only extant sub-species, and it would take significant work to generate something specific enough that it would make sense to split it off into a sub-article. CMD (talk) 04:45, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Subspecies are not automatically considered notable the way the project assumes for species. However, they can be given articles when there is sufficient material to split them from the species article. There are quite a few subspecies articles for the charismatic big mammals.
 * Some authorities recognise 6-8 subspecies of black rhino, e.g. MSW3 recognises six including the Chobe black rhino. However, a 2020 IUCN assessment of the black rhino discusses recent genetic analyses and concluded there are only three subspecies. It doesn't mention the Chobe black rhino. Given it is extinct or has "only one surviving specimen in Botswana", it seems unlikely that there will be enough material for a substantial article, even if the subspecies is recognised.
 * There are subspecies articles on the two extinct Javan rhino subspecies, Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus (Vietnamese Javan rhino or Indochinese Javan rhino) and Rhinoceros sondaicus inermis (lesser Indian rhinoceros), so it would make sense to have an article on the extant subspecies. However, I wonder how easy it would be to separate the information on the species and subspecies. I also have a problem with the names Indonesian Javan rhino and Vietnamese Javan rhino. I doubt these were ever common names used for the animals. They seem more adjectival qualifications for extinct mainland rhinos that are now assigned to the Javan rhino species (i.e. Javan rhinos in Vietnam and Indonesia). If they weren't extinct outside Java, this rhino would have a different name (e.g. Lesser one-horned rhino).
 * In short, while subspecies articles could be justified, there is no value in having stub articles. If the main species articles are expanded and the subspecies sections get too large, then a split could be in order. However, this seems unlikely to happen. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:10, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Speaking of which, I wonder if the subspecies linked at Javan rhinoceros really need those stub articles. FunkMonk (talk) 16:48, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I would say that they are slightly beyond stubs, so acceptable as the status quo. However, I don't think they are that useful as they are or have much scope for future expansion, so I'd oppose their creation if they didn't already exist. A merger with appropriate expansion of the taxonomy and conservation sections could improve the main article, even though it is a featured article. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:04, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Ralphie the Buffalo
Ralphie the Buffalo has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 22:02, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Pampas cat
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Pampas cat that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 12:07, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Even-toed ungulate
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Even-toed ungulate that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. C LYDE TALK TO ME/STUFF DONE 19:42, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Odd-toed ungulate
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Odd-toed ungulate that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 10:49, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Deer
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Deer that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 16:07, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Mesonychid
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Mesonychid that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 18:05, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

B-checklist in project template
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Requested move at Talk:Sir David's long-beaked echidna
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sir David's long-beaked echidna that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 13:28, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Lutung
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Lutung that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 16:55, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Request: Handbook of the Mammals of the World Vol. 9 - Bats
I am currently in search of the "Handbook of the Mammals of the World, Vol. 9 - Bats" to aid in improving related articles. Unfortunately, due to the high cost, obtaining a copy has proven challenging for me.

If any members have access to the handbook and are willing to share it, I would deeply appreciate it. I'm currently working on trying to improve the bat articles and I think the handbook would be a great reference to have.

Myth Sys Myth Sys (talk) 03:06, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Pan-Primates
The redirect Pan-Primates has been nominated at RfD, and the discussion would benefit from input from those with knowledge of the subject area. Please comment at Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 25. Thryduulf (talk) 13:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Merge request of Leporidae into rabbit
Please see Talk:Rabbit. Participate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Saadanius
Saadanius has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. PrimalMustelid (talk) 01:45, 30 December 2023 (UTC)