Talk:Muskrat

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Good article Muskrat has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.

[edit] Family/Revert

Cricetidae is an invalid synonym for Muridae according to ITIS. NCBI gives Muridae. I reverted the change because I can't find anyone who shows Ondatra as Cricetidae, and Wikipedia calls the family Muridae. Is there support for this change? —Tkinias 10:54, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just put together a Cricetidae page, which should explain most of it. Muridae as defined by NCBI and ITIS is based on Musser and Carleton's chapter in Wilson and Reeder's Mammal Species of the World 1993. They explained (Caleton and Musser in a 1984 publication) that they subsumed all subfamilies of muroids into a single family, Muridae, because there was no data to support how any of the previous authors divided the group into families. This was not done because it shouldn't be split into several families (1/4 of all mammals are in this superfamily), just that there was no way of knowing how the subfamilies are related to each other. Since 1993 there have been a series of genetic studies (i.e. Michaux et al. in Molecular Biology and Evolution 2001; Jansa and Weksler in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 2004; and Norris et al. in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 2004) on the group that have all shown essentially the same relationships. The best of these, Steppan et al. 2004, is referenced on the Muroidea page. They proposed the taxonomy shown there. -Aranae 05:48, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
(I moved Aranae's post to make the chronology clear...) OK, cool. I should have looked at who was doing the edit. Being unfamiliar with the literature, I thought this was reverting to an older classification (such as I've seen people do on some fish pages). Looks good. —Tkinias 18:13, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Muskrat Trapping

A Muskrat Trapping article was just created; but I think it would be better suited in here. Merge and redirect? --Andy Saunders 15:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

  • MERGE - SirIsaacBrock 01:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Agreed. MERGE - fdewaele 16:05, 1 May 2006 (CET)
  • MERGE Do it!
  • DON'T MERGE, its ok to have more than 1 section for an animal.
  • MERGE - The trapping article has to do with an aspect of the Muskrat's life. --Acromagalin 22:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
  • UNMERGE (or would that be SPLIT?) The trapping section now takes up about half of the article. RANT Way too much of WP's coverage of animals is human-centric. Look at this article. The majority of it is about how we give them a name or how we exploit them or they harm our interests. One of the worst I have come across is Donkey about half the article is not about donkeys at all but about the connontations of the words "donkey" and "ass". I mentioned this on its talk page. Thanks. I feel better now. Steve Dufour 19:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

How about a picture with color like out in it's surroundings. --Riverofdreams 15:58, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Would this one do? It's a little blurry, and you'd have to contact the copyright holder for permission, but looking at that site it seems possible that he'd give it. It says he took all the photos on that site himself. Also, if he could be convinced to generally consider putting images under the GFDL for Wikipedia on request, his page could be a very useful resource--it seems to have a lot of pictures of nature and such that would be valuable on Wikipedia. Anyway, you could check out the Boilerplate request for permission and send something like that to his email address if you want. Alternatively, this one is at this government site, so we might be able to use it... but I don't see any copyright notices, so you'd have to contact the address at the bottom of that second link to ask about copyright status first. A simple Google Image search for [muskrat] turns up 9,080 results; I'm sure if you dug around a little you could find one you could use under the GFDL, or whose copyright holder could be convinced to put it under the GFDL. Aquillion 02:47, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Replaced line drawing with clear FWS color photo. Hope you like it. Muskrats don't seem to be too photogenic, but this one was. By the way, I sort of know the webmaster of the Eco-USA page you referenced. He's a fellow Hoosier. User:Cuppysfriend 1 September 2005.

[edit] Difference between Nutria?

Since Nutria are similar-looking animals that often dwell in wetlands alongside Muskrat (in many places in North America,) perhaps the differences between the two animals could be pointed out in the article? It is important for a landowner/hunter to know the difference, since, in some states, Muskrat are classified as "furbearers," and therefore subject to closed seasons and regulation, whereas the non-native Nutria is typically not protected. Perhaps a side-by-side illustration of their body shape or skulls could help the reader understand the difference?

As I understand it the muskrat has a much longer tail, which is vertically flattened. This could be mentioned. Steve Dufour 19:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
The size seems to be the main difference, the nutria is much larger. I have added the info to the article. Steve Dufour 03:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Misc

-What is "medium sized" DGerman (talk) 17:24, 26 December 2007 (UTC) -Can we get the measurements in inches, especially considering it is an animal native to America? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.230.178.1 (talk) 03:00, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

They should be in both. I will check it out. What do they use in Canada? Steve Dufour 19:16, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I took care of that, at least for the size of the animals. Steve Dufour 06:27, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too much hunting and trapping?

About half the article is about how to kill a muskrat. I think some of that could be taken out and/or more information about muskrats themselves added to the article. Steve Dufour 19:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I am going to add some info and make some changes to the article. Please forgive my low-tech footnotes. Steve Dufour 02:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed the "hunting and trapping" section. It was totally uncited and was objected to during the FA nomination. Besides, other articles about animals don't have this kind of thing. Steve Dufour (talk) 13:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good article nomination on hold

This article's Good Article promotion has been put on hold. During review, some issues were discovered that can be resolved without a major re-write. This is how the article, as of January 21, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: The prose is very readable, and certainly meets the GA standard. But in terms of Manual of Style compliance, the article needs some work. Structurally, the sections in the article are far too broad. Compare to articles such as the GA-class Northern Cardinal, which has separate sections for diet, behavior and distribution/habitat. I'm going to try some sectioning changes along those lines, so please let me know what you think.
2. Factually accurate?: The nominator expressed some hesitance about the style of citations on WP:GAC. Per the GA criteria and the Manual of Style, either the footnote (i.e. <ref>) format or Harvard referencing is acceptable. The key is internal consistency in style, and the appropriate placement of in-line cites, which the article does well.
3. Broad in coverage?: Broad and concise.
4. Neutral point of view?: Gives fair representation to all significant points of view.
5. Article stability? Obviously stable, with no edit wars underway.
6. Images?: The core GA requirement for images is that any images present have sufficient source and licensing info. Currently, Image:Rat-Musque.jpg has no license. You may try to contact the uploader to provide one, or simply replace it. I've recently uploaded some new images to the muskrat category, so unless there are any objections I'll be making some changes to the images. Note that any such changes aren't a pass/fail issue, so feel free to dispute them if you disagree. Most importantly, I want to change the lead taxobox image to Image:Rat-Musque.jpg.


As stated above, I'm going to try and make the necessary changes myself. I await your feedback before passing the article.

Please address these matters soon and then leave a note here showing how they have been resolved. After 48 hours the article should be reviewed again. If these issues are not addressed within 7 days, the article may be failed without further notice. Thank you for your work so far. VanTucky 00:05, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notes

For readability, please place any comments or questions pertaining to the hold below rather than within the body of the review. Thank you!

  • I've made the changes I think were necessary, and I removed the image that lacked a license. Let me know what you think, VanTucky 00:37, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I think you've done great, but then I'm the nominator. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 03:30, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Obviously all the issues I brought up in the review have been dealt with, so to the best of my knowledge the article meets the GA standard. Congratulations! VanTucky 04:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for all your work. Steve Dufour (talk) 15:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some name and etymology issues

According to the Oxford Dictionary of American English, musquash is an "archaic" term, and comes from the Abenaki language, not Cree.

Also there's no reason to give the French name in an English Wikipedia article (unless it has some interesting cultural implication in translation).

Changes made to reflect this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.155.87 (talk) 07:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Range Map

The article states introduces in South America - not shown on map? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.155.87 (talk) 08:05, 2 June 2008 (UTC)