Talk:Hominidae/Archive 2

message: I'd like to know what the article's source is for refering to the hominini as hominans, as I can find no support for the term in the literature. Where the term is used at all it seems to be referencing the homininae, but even this usage seems rare. "Hominin" seems to be far more widely used to refer to the hominini, with numerous recent papers adopting this terminology. Is there some sort of taxonomic ultimate authority which Wikipedia is bound to, or is this just a mistake? Thanks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.97 (talk) 11:57, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I noticed the same thing, and agree with you. Awickert (talk) 10:09, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The term "hominan" 

message: I assume that all the groups include extinct species as well as living ones, for instance Homo erectus.  Could this be made clear in the first sentence?  Thanks.  Steve Dufour 05:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure!. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Extinct species

message: Just wondering why
::For the book by Robert J. Sawyer, see The Neanderthal Parallax.
occurs at the beginning. Is there a reason people looking for his book would search for "hominid"?
Or people searching for "hominid" should be particularly directed to this book?
--24.215.254.103 19:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Follow the link, and you will have your answer. - UtherSRG (talk) 23:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the reference? 

message: i thought hominids were upright, bipedal organisms and did not include chimpanzees and related apes?
from Merriem-Webster Online:
Main Entry: hom·i·nid 
Pronunciation: 'hä-m&-n&d, -"nid
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin Hominidae, from Homin-, Homo + -idae
: any of a family (Hominidae) of erect bipedal primate mammals comprising recent humans together with extinct ancestral and related forms 
:You would look more intelligent if you capitalized correctly. -The Mysterious El Willstro 71.181.140.237 (talk) 04:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are rather out-dated notions. Note the history section in the Hominoidea article. - UtherSRG (talk) 03:22, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Note the history section in the Hominoidea article. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I thought...? 

message: Contrary to the statement in the article DNA evidence now shows that we are not descended from Neanderthals.
[Work on] .. Neanderthal mtDNA has dated their last common ancestor with humans to about 660,000 years ago, give or take 140,000 years.
Now that the evidence is available, in the shape of a complete neanderthal genome, isn't it time that anachronistic and discredited theories about human ancestry were removed from this article
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14487-first-neanderthal-genome-completed.html  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fentlehan (talk • contribs) 08:40, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how that article disproves to statement. Yes, we are not descended from Neanderthals. The statement doesn't say that. It just says how long ago the ancestor of both lived.92.8.241.179 (talk) 16:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The major problem is that in the "Classification" section, the Homo genus is pointed out as "immediate ancestors of modern humans", which is not true for all of the Homo genus, as we know nowadays that many of the species were short-lived branches that didn't lead to us (for example, the Neanderthal that just got cited here). I suggest we change the phrase to something more accurate, maybe "immediate ancestors and close relatives to modern humans". --201.21.181.131 (talk) 17:05, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neanderthals are not human ancestors 

message: Shouldn't we add some? If humans are apes, then it is logical to include at least one photo. I only see photos of other non-human apes. 64.236.121.129 (talk) 19:37, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Humans are not apes, but we are closely related to them ... HammerFilmFan (talk) 03:05, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There are plenty of people who would agree with you about the first part of that, namely that humans are not apes; but about half of those people are Creationists. Among biologists, it is now pretty widely (though not actually universally) accepted that the genus Homo indeed falls under the (Great) Ape rubric. Check out the opening sentence, and note the left-hand leaf-node of the family tree. The upshot of all this being: Hey, why aren't there any photos of humans in this article...? :~D IfYouDoIfYouDon't (talk) 06:30, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

text: Hey, you fooled me,  HammerFilmFan! There's been a picture of humans here for some time already. Nice, very nice. IfYouDoIfYouDon't (talk) 06:35, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why aren't there any photos of humans in this article? 

message: The intro doesn't include Bonobo as a Great Ape. I keep trying to change it but apparently the edit is "unconstructive".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.178.147.216 (talk) 00:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Read the comment just after the portion you are trying to edit. To wit, "chimpanzee" covers both species of chimps: the Common Chimpanzee, and the Bonobo (also known as the Pygmy Chimpanzee). The listing only includes the genus-level common names. There are two species of chimpanzees (as I've just mentioned), and there are also two species of gorillas and two species of orangutans. For simplicity, we don't list all of the species, just the common names for the genera. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bonobo 

message: Apparently Spain has extended rights to Great Apes. Should this be reflected somewhere in the article? 74.56.236.39 (talk) 04:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have a verifiable and reliable source you can [[WP:CITE|cite]? - UtherSRG (talk) 07:22, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This guys vandalized a few places. Check his contributions. So it's best to treat this post here as a "joke", although I wouldn't blame anyone if they considered it racist. Deamon138 (talk) 21:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually he is telling the truth to an extent. Spain has granted limited civil rights towards non-human great apes. Westvoja (talk) 02:17, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

text: On July 11 I added a "Legal status" section to this article to summarize this. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 20:05, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Civil rights for Great Apes 

message: the official Virunga National Park website added because it is the only park in the world with three taxa of great apes.  The site is critical to great ape conservation.  While the external link was removed as spam, I think it is justified.  Unless you disagree, please revert.
: I deleted the link in question as it promotes a product (namely the Park and its funding), and is only tangentially connected with the subject of the article. The link would, in my view, be appropriate at the Virunga National Park page itself, but it seems to serve no useful purpose here - many parks and zoos feature apes, and since Wikipedia is not a collection of links, we can't link to all of them.Anaxial (talk) 23:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Virunga

message: I can't comprehend the following sentence:
:The lack of morphological corroboration of the molecular similarity of humans and chimpanzees is widely assumed to reflect a false evolutionary signal from the morphology, but an alternative possibility is that the molecular evidence is misleading because it represents overall similarity rather than uniquely shared molecular characters.
It's simply too vague, f.ex. "false evolutionary signal" (how?), "molecular evidence" (which?), "uniquely shared molecular characters" (ehhmm? "characters"?), and it might profit from being split into more than one sentence. I'm huhhing it. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 14:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Huhhing it was rather generous of you.  I removed it.  When it says something it can be readded.  --KP Botany (talk) 09:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Fortunately, one of the articles used as a cite is available in full online. Having read it, I think I understand what the sentence is trying to say, and have rephrased it accordingly. Has this helped? Anaxial (talk) 10:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The current formulation is as clear and comprehensible as spring water. The point is that the "early-from-Orangutan" theory (just clumsily inventing a term, don't take seriously!) is supported by maintaining that Orangutan has gone through a heavy genetical change while keeping the general morph, and it is motivated by trying to explain why a lot of australopitechine characters ("parts of the morph") reminds us of orangutans. I could vaguely "sense" that in the sentence that I huhhed, but I couldn't get the sentence fit my "gut-feeling". ... said: Rursus (bork²) 10:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, yes, generally I know where the sentence is coming from, and can guess its author even.  I'll read Anaxial's input.  --KP Botany (talk) 10:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It is sourced by two sources, so while probably a minority theory, it is an interesting alternative, contributing to making science "fascinating!". What would science be without alternatives? But of course: the alternatives must be viable by scientific measures. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 11:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Like most "interesting" alternative theories, however, it's weight in the scientific community overall must be properly noted within the article.  I think, probably, knocked out here on the talk page, probably before including the information.  --KP Botany (talk) 11:21, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: True enough, it could do with more qualification as to how much support the theory has - although that's true of the whole paragraph, not just this one sentence. Even the journal article cited makes it clear that the theory is not mainstream. (And, personally, I find it a little hard to believe). Anaxial (talk) 12:09, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it's not about our belief systems, luckily.  Should we pull the whole paragraph and discuss it here?  --KP Botany (talk) 20:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Luckily not, no! But it does strike me that, given how fringe this theory is, we probably don't need an entire alternative list of species (i.e. presenting the same information again, in an order that almost all scientists agree is wrong). That really gives undue weight to the theory, in my opinion, because it makes it look like its on an equal footing with the generally accepted theory. So I will delete that part for the time being - it's easy enough to reconstruct if need be. Anaxial (talk) 19:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not on the level of completely dismissable, meaning that some evolutionary scientists will discuss the theory.  I've never stood around a seminar with a bunch of evolutionary biologists and geneticists and paleontologists and geologists and discussed flood geology, but I have sat around with a similar group and discussed the orangutan theory of human origins.  I suggest that if it can be credibly sourced it can be included to the level of the weight the source gives it.  Unless and until then it can sit on the sidelines without real damage to this article which has other issues. --KP Botany (talk) 04:34, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Help! (unparseable sentence)

message: "In both chimpanzees and gorillas, the groups include at least one dominant male, and females leave the group at maturity. By contrast, orangutans are generally solitary."
Because orangutans have often been observed wandering about on themselves, they have been regarded as solitary animals for a long time. Due to this assumption, at many zoos they have lived/live alone which usually led/leads to great loneliness and suffering for the animals. 
As recent studies have revealed (like the observations of Willie Smits, founder of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation), orangutans do enjoy the company of members of their own kind. 
It is assumed that their relatively often solitary travelling is due to a shortage of sufficient food in the rainforests on Borneo and Sumatra. 
If they travelled in larger groups, the chances that the found food would be enough for every member would be rather small. 
But it has been discovered that when there is enough food for several individuals in one place (like when a great fig tree is bearing fruit), many orangutans gather together and prove to be very sociable (playing, communicating, ...).
Averaged, there are more fruits for the orangutans growing in the rainforests on Sumatra than on Borneo (except for the years when many trees on Borneo are bearing fruit at the same time).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by AnnaMaria15 (talk • contribs) 17:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orangutans: Social behaviour - Solitary animals? 

message: At the moment it only seems to cover the human/chimpanzee stem group, with no mention of gorilla or Ponginae history. I don't know much about them so I can't edit it myself; I do know there are a lot of Ponginae fossils that could be talked about in this section.92.8.241.179 (talk) 16:36, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  History section needs to be expanded