Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animals

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Animals and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14: 6 months

WikiProject Animals is within the scope of WikiProject Animals, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to animals and zoology. For more information, visit the project page.AnimalsWikipedia:WikiProject AnimalsTemplate:WikiProject Animalsanimal

WikiProject Animals To-do:

Here are some Open Tasks :

Copyedit:
Merge: GLAM/ARKive donated texts into articles about endangered species.
Improve: Photoperiodism, Tool use by non-human animals, Omnivore, Animal suicide, Sphaerium beckmani (a species in family Sphaeriidae),
Requests:
- Mammals:
- Invertebrates: Campocraspedon
- Fishes: Zaniolepis frenata
Merge: GLAM/ARKive donated texts into articles about endangered species.
Expand: Junqueira cow, Atka mackerel
Nominate and vote: Science collaboration of the month, Article Improvement Drive, WikiProject Animals Collaboration

WikiProject Animals was featured in a WikiProject Report in the Signpost on 19 July 2010.

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WT:ANIMALSWT:ANIMALS

Archives

Archive 1 (September 2007 – May 2008)
Archive 2 (June 2008 – September 2009)
Archive 3 (September 2009 – November 2009)
Archive 4 (December 2009)
Archive 5 (January 2010 – July 2010)
Archive 6 (August 2010 – December 2010)
Archive 7 (December 2010 – July 2011)
Archive 8 (July 2011 - August 2014)
Archive 9 (September 2014 - )

This page has archives. Topics inactive for 180 days are automatically archived 1 or more at a time by if there are more than 5.

Good article reassessment for Carl Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus 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. Z1720 (talk) 17:45, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting third opinion on discussion of short descriptions for notable individual animals

I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts here on short descriptions for notable individual animals, particularly whether the redundancy of including their species in the short description is acceptable, and secondarily if it is more appropriate to refer to a primate that is not a pet as a "pet".

I've started a discussion at the following talk page: Talk:Bubbles (chimpanzee)#short description due to my edit being disputed; the edit was changing the short description of Bubbles (chimpanzee) from "Pet once owned by Michael Jackson" to "Chimpanzee once owned by Michael Jackson" as this is more accurate as well as consistent with the guidance and other comparable articles. MossOnALog^Talk 20:07, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Veronika (cow)

Please take a look at this page with your best science eyes. That a cow can use a broom as a backscratcher is, imho for the birds. I've put a comment on the talk page there. I think this is an AI generated spoof - and quite a sophisticated one. There's no peer review of this extraordinary claim. TheListeningHandAgain (talk) 15:31, 30 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"Flexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow" was published in the peer reviewed journal Current Biology. Full reference in the article. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 16:23, 30 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I know. I am saying the article is a spoof - a cyber spoof. Do you really believe cows use backscratchers? Or more correctly one cow out of 1.5 billion? To be clear the material in the journal is correspondence - not peer reviewed, far too much weight given to the (AI) videos.TheListeningHandAgain (talk) 13:41, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The Boss (bear)

I just started this article. Anyone want to help out with it? RanDom 404 (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusion criteria for List of organisms of Place

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Inclusion criteria for List of organisms of Place about what should be included in such lists. Please contribute there. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:45, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Astrometis sea star

Hello! I have a question about moving pages. I noticed that Astrometis is actually a monotypic sea star genus, as the WoRMS page lists the previously disputed species as a synonym. For other pages on monotypic genera, the page is titled the genus name, so I assumed that that should be the case here. Should the page Astrometis sertulifera be moved to the Astrometis namespace? Or should it not be because there is already (a very little) content on that namespace already? Thank you in advance! Ash assists (talk) 14:30, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The A. sertulifera article should be merged (not moved) into Astrometis. That just means copying the content of the species article to the genus article and redirecting the species. Plantdrew (talk) 16:06, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Any ideas on format?

I'm trying to bring all animal genera up to featured article status alphabetically. My first was Apororhynchus (Animalia, Acanthocephala....), and I've got 5 more. But I have trouble with this one: Mediorhynchus. There are just too many species. I was thinking a box like this? Anyone have any ideas on a good format, or which columns I should use? A second table with the measurements for each species so you can sort by sizes? Mattximus (talk) 23:44, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck when you get to Agrilus! (sorry I don't have a more helpful comment, I just thought the number of species listed there was funny) MossOnALog^Talk 00:28, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(Funniest: Stenus: 3100+ species, according to the current Catalogue of Life download, taxonomicStatus = 'accepted') - Kweetal nl (talk) 05:07, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Name

Taxonomy

Host(s) and Range

Diagnostic features

Mediorhynchus africanus
Amin, Evans, Heckmann and El-Naggar, 2013^[1]

The species name africanus is named for the worm's distribution across sub-Saharan Africa.^[1] It is synonymous with Empodius segmentatus (de Marval, 1902) Southwell et MacFie, 1925 and Mediorhynchus selengensis Harris 1973.^[2]


The Helmeted guineafowl is found in Kruger National Park (South Africa), Morocco, Nigeria and Burkina Faso.	Distribution map of the Yellow-necked spurfowl

A dorsoventrally flattened, pseudo-segmented trunk bears numerous sensory pits. The proboscis is covered in 18–22 longitudinal rows of 4–6 hooks, and terminates in two conspicuous apical pores. In females, the posterior extremity is expanded and forms a dorsal, dome-shaped terminal projection situated opposite the subterminal gonopore. The eggs are comparatively large.^[2]

Mattximus (talk) 23:44, 20 February 2026 (UTC) [reply]

References

^ ^a ^b Amin, Omar M.; Evans, Paul; Heckmann, Richard A.; El-Naggar, Atif M. (2013). "The description of Mediorhynchus africanus n. sp. (Acanthocephala: Gigantorhynchidae) from galliform birds in Africa". Parasitology Research. 112 (8): 2897–2906. doi:10.1007/s00436-013-3461-9. PMID 23722716. S2CID 5952065.
^ ^a ^b Cite error: The named reference Amin2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Requested move at Talk:Therianthropy (disambiguation)#Proposed merge of Therian into Therianthropy (disambiguation)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Therianthropy (disambiguation)#Proposed merge of Therian into Therianthropy (disambiguation) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Abesca (talk) 00:49, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"Possibly living animals"

The article Fred Basset (greyhound) lists this animal as 21 years old. The dog is surely dead by now. We need a system like Category:Possibly living people, but for animals, so that we can (automatically?) track cases like this. ~2026-26064-61 (talk) 09:39, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Specific name (zoology)#Requested move 24 April 2026

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Specific name (zoology)#Requested move 24 April 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 09:01, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Sponge#Requested move 22 May 2026

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sponge#Requested move 22 May 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Chess enjoyer (talk) 22:59, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

June 2026 GAN Backlog Drive

Good article nominations \| June 2026 Backlog Drive
June 2026 Backlog Drive: Do you want to become more experienced in the GA process? On 1 June, a one-month backlog drive for good article nominations will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles reviewed. Mentors are available, and new reviewers (<6 reviews) get bonus points! Interested in taking part? You can sign up here.
Other ways to participate: Join the conversations on our talk page.
You're receiving this message because you have participated in a good article review this year or participated in the previous backlog drive.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:59, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question about Taxobox

I am reviewing Draft:Meandrina jacksoni and I have a question about the taxobox. Why does the taxobox display no taxonomic ranks between the phylum and the genus?

I'm a chemist, not a zoologist, but I know what the hierarchy is in biology. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:05, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the exact reason, but it was related to the fact that that was a manual taxobox. I converted it to the more commonly used speciesbox, and now it's displaying normally. Chess enjoyer (talk) 02:19, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes it isn't necessary to know what caused a problem if you know how to fix it. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:47, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The parameter names were wrong. The {{taxobox}} uses Latin names for ranks, so |phylum= and |genus= were valid parameter names, but it needed to use |classis=, |ordo= and |familia= for the intermediate ranks. — Jts1882 | talk 05:56, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Pleocola limnoriae#Requested move 19 June 2026

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Pleocola limnoriae#Requested move 19 June 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Chess enjoyer (talk) 04:46, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello,
Please note that Injury, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
_{Delivered by — MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 22 June 2026 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team}[reply]

[Aminafricanus-1] Amin, Omar M.; Evans, Paul; Heckmann, Richard A.; El-Naggar, Atif M. (2013). "The description of Mediorhynchus africanus n. sp. (Acanthocephala: Gigantorhynchidae) from galliform birds in Africa". Parasitology Research. 112 (8): 2897–2906. doi:10.1007/s00436-013-3461-9. PMID 23722716. S2CID 5952065.

[Amin2013-2] Cite error: The named reference Amin2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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