# Talk:Brown bear

What I think should be changed (format using {{textdiff}}):
"Of the carnivorans, it is rivaled in size only by its closest relative, the polar bear, which is much less variable in size..."

Why it should be changed:
The largest animal in carnivora is the Southern Elephant Seal; this statement isn't correct. I propose reducing the granularity of the statement to Ursidae.

References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):
Southern_elephant_seal#Description
Pinniphead (talk) 23:09, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Per WP:CIRC the reference provided above is not considered "reliable" and cannot be used in support of a request. Of course, if you can find a reliable source that directly supports the request, we will take another look at it. Anaxial (talk) 23:33, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Nevertheless, as Pinniphead points out, the statement is trivially incorrect currently. Reasonable remedies would be limiting to bears (see below) or terrestrial carnivora (which might need an additional citation).
This is an uncited lead sentence, it must be paraphrasing the statement under 'Description' which says "... the largest coastal populations attain sizes broadly similar to those of the largest living bear species, the polar bear."
I don't think that is a very good reference for the claim and the paragraph needs a little general clean up as well. I might take a crack at that first and come back to this. -- xarzin (talk) 01:41, 5 January 2025 (UTC) xarzin (talk) 01:41, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Ok, I made some edits to the description/size section to clean it up and remove some of the figures in particular not supported in the references cited. I don't think I changed the spirit or much of the substance of the section, but please edit and/or revert as folks feel is appropriate. I did make an effort to find references for some the figures I removed, but was not successful.
Finally, I did make a minor edit to the lead to correct it and I think it is now consistent with the cited material in the description/size section.
-- xarzin (talk) 04:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Instead of introducing unnecessary mass changes you could have simply rectified the error by adding "land" before "Carnivoran". It's as simple as that. If you do, however, feel that I've somehow made an error in judgment please let me know. ✿ WolveríneX-eye ✿ 07:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
agreed bear and land/terrestrial are about equal. bear was more in line with the literature already cited and since there wasn't an obvious source saying they were the 2nd largest terrestrial carnivora I went with that. open to correction ofc.
on the size section there appeared to be a few problems which I tried to rectify by changing the least correct/relevant content as possible (but again open to being reverted or correct or amended):
some of the citations did not support the statements they were attached to and there wasn't an obvious editing mistake to point to the correct citations that I could notice.
some of the information was inaccurate or misleading
a tendency toward a lot of specific mass figures from primary sources that were confusing and didn't add anything to the main points of the paragraph or could not be found in the references cited.
-- xarzin (talk) 08:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Oh I see you've already reverted everything. At minimum I would suggest the following:
clarify the lead to be about body mass, since the statement might not be true for linear dimensions
take another look at the figures and citations in the size section there appears to be something wrong.
additionally, in the size section there are unqualified statements that only apply to north american brown bears.
--xarzin (talk) 08:51, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Sure, I'll take a look at the citations in about an hour or two. Just gotta finish something up. ✿ WolveríneX-eye ✿ 08:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

I feel like the first occurrence of "grizzly bear", which is in the lede, should actually link to grizzly bear. The only other place that article is currently linked to from here, as far as I can tell, is the image caption in the § Hybrids section. 2A02:560:4DB8:3E00:1C19:6879:7228:D53B (talk) 10:42, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

 Done Thepharoah17 (talk) 11:00, 1 July 2025 (UTC)