Talk:Fennec fox

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by reviewer, closed by RoySmith talk 03:05, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the ear to body ratio of the fennec fox is the greatest in the canid family and likely helps in dissipating heat and locating prey?

• Source: [1]

[2]

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Stride (bus rapid transit)

Improved to Good Article status by Wolverine X-eye (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 5 past nominations.

Wolverine X-eye (talk) 17:35, 9 January 2025 (UTC).

• A superbly written and referenced article that is chock-full of interesting factoids. Would be most happy to pass this once QPQ has been done. Cheers, --KINGofLETTUCE 👑 🥬 06:14, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

@Kingoflettuce: Completed QPQ. Wolverine X-eye (talk) 19:12, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

• Comment – The nominator was blocked recently and the GA approval of this article was challenged. Relevant discussion is here. Yue🌙 05:12, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

  Discussion was closed, but the GA seems to have stood for now, and it was passed by an experienced reviewer. CMD (talk) 08:53, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm going to close this per WP:BMB. @Extraordinary Writ:. RoySmith (talk) 03:04, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Use of source 38 is inaccurate

In the source, the phrasing does not appear to actually be stating that fennec foxes are considered normative in the furry community; instead, it seems to state that the name "Woolf" is normative. Wolves are very common in the furry community, to the point of a stereotype, so this statement makes sense. Unless someone has another source for fennec foxes being normative in said community, the sentence "Moreover, within the furry community, the fennec fox is said to be normative in nature, which in the contexts of the community, is a rather rare attribute." is inaccurate and should be removed and possibly replaced with other information about this animal's appearances in the furry community. Fireburst520 (talk) 05:29, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Please, if you are reading this, do not include "other information about this animal's appearances in the furry community". This is neither the place nor the point of the article. If you really want to add things about fennec foxes, consider adding it into the furry wiki of your choice or the appropriate page in Wikipedia if such an information is important enough and peer-reviewed, and keep in mind that most headcanons about fennec foxes will not regard much people other than yourself. Your fursonas, as cool as they may be, are probably not important enough to warrant inclusion in Wikipedia, and if they do, this is probably not the place where they do. As a corollary, it's not worth-it to add every representation of fennec foxes in every piece of media ever. Only the most important representations are worth the trick. Larrayal (talk) 01:09, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

GA status

Hi @Chiswick Chap: please could you re-close your GA review of this article as a fail? The OP has been community banned at [3] for poor conduct on this article and others, and there's a general sentiment that the Fennec fox article doesn't meet the GA requirements. Larrayal made several objections at Talk:Fennec fox/GA2 that haven't been addressed, and I think it's a big stretch to say this meets the GA criteria. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 10:46, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I read the GA2 comments, and noted in GA3 that the earlier review had been "acrimonious". I note that nom has been banned but would observe that that is not in itself a reason for revisiting a GAN. I considered the GA2 comments independently and consciously took a different view. The taxonomy section, necessary for a species article, has been greatly improved. The phylogeny is covered briefly but reasonably for a single species. The description is accurate and appropriately cited, as is the distribution and habitat section. The behaviour and ecology are obviously of interest and are covered reliably and in detail. Threats to the species are covered appropriately. The article concludes with a much extended discussion of the species' interaction with humans, with a discussion of its appearance in culture, and its use as a pet and in captivity. These sections are conventional for a species article, and the sources used are both numerous and of a suitable range of types, from scientific articles to literature. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:59, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Hello. I did the acrimonious GA2.

From a quick lookup :

The taxonomy section includes barely any sources, specially not the ones related to species descriptions, which are findable online. It's usually better to find the primary source of such claims, in peer-reviewed journals, than in a wide-public book. In the absence of those sources in databases available, they can be replaced by in-passing citations of more recent papers, but this is not such case. This article probably needs Zimmermann, 1780 ; Gmelin, 1788 ; Meyer, 1793 ; Desmarest, 1804 ; Illiger, 1811 and 1820 ; Lesson, 1827 ; Boitard, 1842 ; Gray, 1843 ; Corbet, 1978 ; and the ill-defined "following molecular analysis" which is probably the most important part of the information there. These lacks are also unclear : a species is not given synonyms. Synonyms are first described, then lumped, they are not something to be described and given in the same paper. So, did Boitard, Lesson and Gray described new species, or did they lump them ? If they only described them, when were they lumped, and by whom ? What do the paragraph means by "type locality" ? A type locality is a special place where the founding specimen has been found, usually very localized, sometimes at worst at the region-level if the provenance is not well understood. If Larivière, 2002 suggest that type localities wide as countries have been given, I do highly doubt this claim, and would like to see the term used by the previous authors. It seems to me from some cues that they did not declare a type locality, but rather a repartition, and that Larivière, 2002 is assuming unstated localities, which kinda puts in doubt its utility as a source for this section, and moreover as the only source for almost the entirety of the history section.

The phylogeny section isn't worth anything, and is implying that the fennec fox is closely related with the seven other species of "desert foxes", which is unsupported by present litterature, and is a direct consequence of using only vague, non-academic sources : see Basuony et al., 2023, Lindblad-Toh et al., 2005 and Koepfli, 2015 for currently understood, DNA-based and not feel-based fox phylogeny. The statements included in this section are all covered in the Description section. Similarily, the etymology of the term has nothing to do there.

I do agree that the three last sections, where the bulk of the citations are, have been improved a lot since I looked over them and are now probably worth considering for Good Article. But the taxonomy and particularly the phylogeny sections clearly show a lack of research in the history of the species and its relationships. I think this is probably a B article, but sadly the Taxonomy section is basically unsourced and the Phylogeny section is for all intents and purposes a single line. Admittedly, one could merge them, it's usually done in that kind of case, but you still have to put some work into a phylogenetical tree and a bit more bulk to explain why they came to such conclusions. Larrayal (talk) 17:37, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Many thanks for the agreement and praise for the improvements. If you feel the short sections should be merged, that's fine, I have done that now. I'd remind you that this is GA not FA, and the key criterion is coverage of "the main points". I'm confident that the article does that. As for improvements, the nominator is obviously not able to respond; without wishing to boast, it's clear that the latest GAN round was at least somewhat productive, given a notably difficult nominator. On "type locality", this is a standard term of art meaning the place where the type specimen used to define the taxon was taken. If a research paper author has used the term somewhat loosely, and should have used a still more specialized term, you may well be right about that; I note only that nom was certainly giving the taxonomy their best efforts so as to improve the article. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:49, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Hello, I repeat myself, but those sections do not pass the GA criterion. The taxonomy section is, as demonstrated, basically unsourced ; it is almost entirely based on a single paper's listing of previous works in passing. This is barely a source, more thorough work would be expected there for it even to pass GA status. The original description, which is available digitalized online, is not even linked ; nom assumed things based on an excerpt that was already assuming type localities without such terms being used in text. The source is flawed, and its use is also flawed. The fact that nom gave their best efforts to improve the article is not a criteria for Good Article. As it stands, Taxonomy is unsourced ; cut up all the things that should not be there, Phylogeny is at best two lines, and regardless of its inclusion or not within taxonomy, critically incomplete. Preservation of the article's GA status needs to answer those issues, head me up if you need a phylogeny done if your objective is to keep improving the article. Larrayal (talk) 00:59, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Feel free to add a phylogenetic tree; I see such a thing as a requirement for a higher taxon article, but beyond the GA criteria for a single species article really. Chiswick Chap (talk) 01:56, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

To save faffing about and for the avoidance of doubt, I've added a set of primary sources (species descriptions). This level of detail however goes way beyond what is required to cover GACR's "the main points". If you feel that additional secondary sources are required, please feel free to add them to make the article as robust as you think fit. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:53, 30 January 2025 (UTC)