Talk:Polar bear/Archive 1

message: I was wondering about the Spirit bear - an interesting parallel, though I assume it is much more recent.  Does anyone know?  And should there be a link?  --GwydionM 18:31, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Spirit Bears are Black Bears with a recessive mutation.  Even in the area where they are found, only one Black Bear in ten bears a double helping of the recessive white gene.  --  Geo Swan 10:34, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spirit Bears - Any Relation?

message: In their spare time they do fun stuff. They slide on their bellies, box with eachother, dunk eachother, and more. When the female makes her den she makes it on a hillside so her cubs can slide down the hill on their bottomes.
I can't confirm or deny this but it seems a bit unlikely?  The cubs do seem to 'play' in this way.  I strongly doubt that the location of the den is decided in this fashion though. Does anyone have any data for this?  akaDruid 15:01, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Surreal Edits

message: I had the impression from somewhere that polar bears aren't actually "bears" - that is, although morphologically they certainly look like bears, immunogenetic and/or skeletal analysis showed that they're far more closely related to weasels than they are to other bears. Does anyone know anything about this? DS 13:37, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Weasels?

message: Is it true that all Polar Bears are left-handed? Ahkayah cuarenta y siete 21:13, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Polar bears can't use their hands to hold, grip, or manipulate things in any meaningful way.  Thus, left or right handedness is irrelevant to them  Malamockq 05:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Left-handedness? 

message: Copied the following from User talk:Keenan Pepper and User talk:Wsiegmund. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:02, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for warning me about the capitalization of common names for species; I didn't even know there was any controversy. Do Canadians really capitalize it "Polar Bear"? I was just going by what I read at Talk:Bear#Caps. —Keenan Pepper 06:34, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing out Talk:Bear#Caps.  That was a low intensity discussion! The second edit was almost two years after the first, and your edits were nine months after that. User:Funnyhat is still around. He has been editing U.S. topics, so it may be that he was just citing the American practice, rather than Wikipedea policy. I may leave him a note on his talk page tomorrow. Regarding the Canadian practice, I really can't say. But, I have worked with one English editor who said that they capitalize common names. I didn't find consistent (or even frequent) capitalization of common names at the Banff and Jasper National Parks websites.   My impression is that Canadian English is intermediate between the U.K. and U.S., but that is only an impression. I'm pretty certain that they have retained much of the U.K. spelling of words, e.g., colour. Word pronounciation is much closer to the U.S. than to the U.K. I'm relieved that you didn't mind my comments. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 07:22, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Hi Keenan Pepper! I was curious this morning to look into the current practice for capitalizing the common names of North American mammals. Among Grizzly Bear, American Black Bear, Gray Wolf, Moose, Wapiti (Elk), Bighorn Sheep, Mountain goat, Wolverine, Puma, and Pronghorn, lower case seems to be more common. For plants, the common names are mostly or all capitalized. See Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, Limber Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Rocky Mountains Juniper and Quaking Aspen. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Keenan - happened on your note at Walter's talk page, thought I'd add a bit for clarity. It isn't a US/Canadian or any other variant of English, it's more of a disambiguation and clarification thing, with capitalisation probably started by various field guide authors many years ago (e.g. Roger Tory Peterson capitalised names in his field guides; he may well be one of the first). There are various reasons for it, most importantly that a brown bear (a bear that happens to be brown in colour) is not necessarily the same as a Brown Bear (a particular species, Ursus arctos) - e.g. many Black Bears are actually brown. Also very useful is that it takes away the need to know the etymology of a species name, as to whether it is derived from a proper name or not, e.g. if using proper name rules, did you know that Brazilwood should not be capitalised (the country is named after the tree, not vice-versa), whereas Bishop Pine is (named after the CA town San Louis Obispo, not after the church rank) - and then there's names borrowed from other languages, e.g. should Pohutukawa be capitalised or not - do you know enough Maori language?!? I don't!! Another is that it gives uniformity of treatment in lists without "first-class, capitalised" species and "lesser, non-capitalised" species. Generally, most wildlife-interested people capitalise species common names (having picked the habit up from field guides), whereas most other people don't, but it isn't a hard-and-fast rule. If you want to dig further, there's been extensive discussion on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life page, take a look through the archives. There's been a small but consistent majority in favour of caps (with no discernible geographic bias of those for and against). Hope this helps! - MPF 00:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Keenan - I looked into this a bit more. I have field guides with capitalized common names and field guides with uncapitalized common names (I got into this controversy in the first place by referring to the latter). However, the more major ones, especially The Sibley Guide to Birds (a new American guide) and others use the capitalized convention. The  WP:MOS asserts, American English and Commonwealth English differ in their inclination to use capitals. Commonwealth English uses capitals more widely than American English does. That is how I got the notion that this was a US/UK usage difference. But, the Times (London) uses uncapitalized common names.  So, I stand corrected. I'm convinced by Michael's arguments and support the use of capitalized (or capitalised) common names in Wikipedia articles on plants and animals. Thank you, Michael. BTW, do either of you object to putting a copy of this discussion on the Polar Bear talk page where it might be found more easily? Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 03:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm kinda ambivalent on the capitalization (see a discussion here. I think the citation issue is more serious. Just be sure not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Xiner (talk, email) 03:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization of common names 

message: I removed "The Polar Bears are one of the biggest carnivores and it is the biggest bear", just now. The first point is already in the article. The second is implicit in the second sentence of the article. Walter Siegmund (talk) 01:23, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biggest bear 

message: Why not include the name "Nanook" which is the traditional name of polar bears used by the Inuit?  They are the people who have the most history and stongest connection with these bears.
:Thank you for your suggestion!  When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed.  Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the  link at the top. You don't even need to log in!  (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold.  Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly.  If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:00, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names  

message: Polar Bear-baiting If u have more information, citations, images or other, please do not hesitate to post it to the articles discussion page.  Thank you SirIsaacBrock 02:19, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Polar Bear-baiting

message: "There have been no proposals to date to transplant the species to some other environment, such as Antarctica." If there have been no proposals, why is this line even in the entry? Is there any source for the notion that this would even be a viable idea?
:What a dreadful idea. If it succeeded, it would almost certainly result in the extinction of Antarctic fauna, e.g., Emperor Penguins. It seems to have been added in early October.  --Walter Siegmund (talk) 06:43, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relocation to Antarctica? 

message: Good first draft, but:
"For example, when a Polar Bear sits and waits by a seal's breathing hole, it covers its nose with its paws. This is because a Polar Bear's nose is the only non-white colored part of their body, and a seal could see it through the surface of the water."
This is a rubbish myth and it is compounded 2 pars later with the even more rubbishy myth about hand preference.
"Almost every polar bear is left handed. When stalking prey on the ice, a polar bear draws his right paw across his black nose, hiding his primary dark body part, the better to successfully sneak up on his next meal. (Some polar bears also squeeze their eyes almost closed, for even more complete camouflage.) Then, the bear batters his lunch to death with his stronger, dominant, left paw."
I've edited both references out.
Plus I've removed the external reference http://www.wildanimalsonline.com/mammals/polarbear.php
which not only appears to be a source (there are thousands more all over the net, of course) of the handednes/hunting story but is also a commercial sucker site, baited with pop-ups that are just ready to trap kids who may be looking for homework references.
Any chance of getting a little more rigorous with fact through the entire article?
Thedarky 16:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  needs looking over by someone a tad more expert perhaps? 

message: Is there a reason why nearly every time the species' common name appears in the text, both words are capitalized? This does not seem standard to me... Radagast 20:47, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It varies all over the place, and has been brought up numerous times to much debate and no concensus on a standard, thus capitalization and lack of capitalization methods are both accepted, as long as the article is consistent. -Dawson 21:00, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization? 

message: My school-aged daughter came home today with a very POV (anti-hunting) article on polar bear hunting (i.e. hunting of polar bears by humans). Since I knew nothing about it, I checked Wikipedia and to my dismay there seems to be nothing on it. A quick google reveals about 500 are hunted per year, about 1/5 by Inuit, the rest by hunters who pay a hefty license fee. Anyone knowledgable want to write something up? Otherwise I'll add a very terse section myself. It seems to me far more relevant than Polar Bear-baiting, which has its own article. Rocksong 10:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hunting by humans 

message: I'm certainly no expert, but is it correct to say, as this article does in its first paragraph, that polar bears have blubber? I thought blubber was limited to marine mammals and was physiologically different from fat. Could someone who knows more than I about adipose tissue and polar bears please weigh in on this and correct the article if I'm right? Do polar bears have fat or blubber? — CKA3KA (Skazka) 07:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm no expert on the subject, and the substance may well be physiologically different, but for the common understanding of the term blubber, I think it applies. Almost every source I've read on polar bears, from kiddie encyclopedia to scientific papers, refers to their fat layer as blubber. -Dawson 16:21, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blubber? 

message: On 18 April 2006 an anonomous editor added information on exceptional size sourcing "Guinness world of records" (undated).  I wasn't able to verify this but replaced it with a number from a web source that I cited, but didn't necessarily view as a WP:RS. On 06:30, 22 April 2006 an anon (probably the same one) left me a nice note on my talk page,  and restored the information citing "Guinness World of records 2006".  This complies with my understanding of the guidelines for reliable sources, and I think it should stand. I've added the complete citation. While I was at it, I converted the footnotes to the Cite.php form. See WP:FN. The web footnotes need to be fleshed out and I will do that if no one else beats me to it. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 09:11, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exceptional size/footnotes 

message: The part about eating grease and motor oil, that's from an issue of either Equinox or Canadian Geographic that I read when I was at my parents' house. I'll see about finding the specific bibliographic data. DS 21:14, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source