Talk:Elephant

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Good article Elephant was a nominee for Natural sciences good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
On 1 August, 3 August, 18 October 2006 and 24 May 2007, the article page associated with this talk page was the target of vandalism encouraged by The Colbert Report, a popular television show.
All prior and subsequent edits are noted in the revision history.
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[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Steve Hirano.jpg

Image:Steve Hirano.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quick-failed Good Article nomination

According to the quick-fail criteria, any article that has cleanup or expansion banners (such as the ones currently in National parks and Family classification) must be failed immediately and does not require an in-depth review. Please remedy any issues brought up by such banners and remove them before choosing to renominate the article. Despite not requiring a detailed review, I will take this time to point out that the article far from meets the GA criteria in terms of the use of in-line citations. There are many large sections that lack even a single citation, and this is unacceptable. For good basic verification, facts must be attributed to particular sources, even if it's just a single cite at the end of each paragraph. If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me. If you feel this review was in error, you may seek a reassessment. Thank you for your work so far, VanTucky 22:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright violations

The sections "Reproduction" and "Motherhood and calf rearing" are copyright violations that were added in this edit almost three years ago. The evidence: the Wayback Machine shows that the Toledo Zoo had this on their page from at least April 2003. howcheng {chat} 17:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks like you've removed the offending text. Is the copyvio tag still necessary? --NeilN talk ♦ contribs 21:23, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I guess not. If someone wants to rewrite those sections to avoid the copyright problem, then feel free to remove the notice. howcheng {chat} 21:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
It's pretty confusing as it stands now. There is no copyrighted text but the note says the article will be deleted within one week. --NeilN talk ♦ contribs 01:48, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, that's because the template was built for whole-article copyvios. I don't think we have a section-only template. howcheng {chat} 04:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
That's because Wikipedia has historically not bothered to tag sections for copyvios. There's no reason to; you simply remove the offending text. It's different when the entire article is a copyvio, since some explanation is needed for a blank page. 63.249.97.90 (talk) 16:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
The {{copyvio}} tag is for whole articles, and the entire article should be blanked if it's used because we want the copyright holder to know we're investigating and we take their copyright seriously. {{Copypaste}} is appropriate for sections and would have been a better choice here, but it's fine. Usually we revert to an earlier, non-infringing version of the article if it's just a section or a paragraph that's been added. If there's no untainted version of the article, though, we can delete the article and then undelete the versions that do not contain copyrighted text. That's not going to be necessary here - just rewrite it. Thanks. KrakatoaKatie 12:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion on intelligence: art (painting, drawing in the wild)

Hi,

I stumbled on a remarkable video of an elephant painting another elephant walking and holding a flower [1]. After reading a comment from someone asserting that elephants in fact do draw pictures in the sand of themselves in the wild, I came here to find out more, with no success. I'd be interested to see this expanded on a bit.

(Brandon Arnold (talk) 22:19, 28 March 2008 (UTC))


I would be interested too.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.24.212.202 (talk) 00:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

So would I. This same subject came up in the human article when it was asserted that only humans are capable of creating art. Since there was no documentation to claim that elephants (or apes) could create art, the mention of the animals got pulled. Part of the reasoning was that they weren't actually creating art but were trained or pleasing their captors by doing art-like activities. Someone must have written about this art-in-the-wild, so some references must be out there. Bob98133 (talk) 19:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I've seen that amazing video as well, but still I'm pretty sure that elephants do not produce art in the wild. It is, of course, unprovable that they've never done it, but a single counter-example would prove that they have, and if one existed, I would most likely have heard of it. However, the video appears to prove that they are easily intelligent enough to do it if it is rewarded. Hgmichna 08:48, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Classification issues

Are Anancus and Cuvieronius elephantids or gomphotheriids? This page claims that the two genera belong to the Elephantidae, but the page on the Gomphotheriidae claim that they belong there. Obviously they can't belong to both simultaneously. 75.211.124.26 (talk) 02:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

They're gomphotheres. I'll go check and make corrections.--Mr Fink (talk) 04:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
So, I removed Subfamily Lophodontinae, as I doublechecked, and all those genera are indeed gomphotheres.--Mr Fink (talk) 04:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category

Anyone know why the redlink category Category:South Africa-centric shows up on this article? I don't see it in the text of the article anywhere. Deli nk (talk) 20:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It's being generated by the {{Globalizecountry|South Africa}} template at the top of the national parks section. Dave6 talk 08:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Propose a new link

Mary the Elephant - Against All Odds is the charming and informative story of an orphan baby elephant (it's mother killed by poachers in Kenya) who was raised by humans at the Mt. Kenya Wildlife Conservancy and eventually successfully released into the wild. It seems to me a highly appropriate link - but I am biased as I am the webmaster at the web site in question so I leave to somebody else's good judgment whether or not to proceed. Thank you. Chuck @ UPDmedia.com (talk) 02:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] When should this article be unlocked?

Colbert's elephant bit is fading from our memories and episodes are not re-aired, so is it time to quietly unlock this page and see how it goes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.25.240.225 (talk) 00:55, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you think we could put a mention to the Colbert incident in the pop culture references section? I think that it is just a bit odd that there is still no mention of it in the actual article. Jljfuego (talk) 19:30, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I am opposed to that suggestion. This article is about the animal, not about the silliness caused by Colbert's joke. -- Donald Albury 01:56, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
It is an example of elephants in popular culture though. I don't see why it shouldn't be mentioned at all. And Colbert's "joke" was actually quite clever. He pointed out a flaw in Wikipedia's design while poking fun at all the people who take things too seriously.
Colbert making this statement also brought visibility to the poaching and potential extinction of the Elephant. That makes what he did very relevant. Yes it was funny, but think about the number of people that had no idea that Elephants were endangered before the Colbert bit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.147.8.49 (talk) 22:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Jljfuego (talk) 23:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think many editors will argue with your characterization that Colbert pointed out a 'flaw' in Wikipedia's design (try proposing tighter controls on who can edit). -- Donald Albury 02:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it should be unlocked.... in all truth I came here to see if it was still locked, and to edit it if it wasn't to Colbert's joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.6.147.177 (talk) 17:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I strongly suggest to keep it locked, episodes are in fact re-aired, not that much, but during breaks when Colbert doesnt air new episodes. Plus I'm sure his page is viewed alot so people will find it there, and then come here to edit it. Disturbedfan24 (talk) 04:04, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Predators

The intro has this sentence, "Adult elephants have no natural predators." I know that it was recently moved from lower in the article, but I don't think we say that. It has been reported that, in at least one location, lions successfully hunt elephants, including adult elephants. See [2], [3] and [4]. That last link is to a blog, and so can't be used. We really need for someone to access the Dereck Joubert article (listed here). I have seen the Planet Earth episode, and it is quite dramatic, but it is not clear how old the elephant that the lions take down is. -- Donald Albury 23:24, 17 July 2008 (UTC).

Ok, I read the article by Joubert (2006) in African journal in ecology. Out of 187 attacks observed on adult elephants, 1 resulted in the death of an adult (>15years old). This was a severely injured elephant (from a fight with another male) who was eventually killed by lions. I may change the intro to "Healthy adult elephants have no natural predators." --Seb951 (talk) 14:21, 18 July 2008 (UTC)seb951

I thought that some adult females had been taken by lions, as well as the one adult male who had been seriously injured in a fight with another male. I also read that lions have been observed attacking healthy adult male elephants, but those attacks were unsuccessful. However, the Joubert article is the only reliable source I've heard of, and I haven't read it. -- Donald Albury 18:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is the result section from Joubert 2006. Lots of attacks, only one adult killed. If there is reliable info from other sources stating otherwise, you can gladly change the intro. --Seb951 (talk) 19:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Results

Over the 4 years, we observed a total of 74 elephants killed by lions, including eleven elephants in 1993, seventeen in 1994, nineteen in 1995, and 27 in 1996, suggesting an increasing hunting success rate. All the elephants killed, with one exception, were from breeding herds (females and young). The exception was an adult bull, previously wounded by another bull, who remained alive for several days before eventually being killed by the lions. The great majority of the young elephants killed were males, and two-thirds of the kills were of elephants in the age range 4–15 years, with highest hunting success achieved for elephants aged 4–9 years (Table 1). The animals killed were commonly on the periphery of, or straggling behind, the breeding herds, with nearly half killed more than 50 m away from the main herd. Hunts were less commonly attempted on calves which were under the age of 4 years, which remained more closely associated with their mothers. Hunting success for elephants older than 4 years apparently doubled from 33% (n = 9) in 1993 to 62% (n = 61) in 1996. Many attempts to kill adults bulls were made in 1996, when we saw lions attacking elephant bulls almost nightly although only one hunt was successful. All except one of the kills were made at night, and hunts occurred more commonly on dark moon nights than when the moon was bright.


 Table 1  Hunting attempts and success rates of lions on elephants (attempt means unsuccessful kills)

Sex of elephant Age class of elephant (years) Male Female unknown <1 1–2 2–4 4–9 9–15 >15 Adult

1993

 Attempts  6       5       1       2       2       0       1       4       1       2
 Kills  3       4       1       1       3       1       1       2       0       0
 Total  9       9       2       3       5       1       2       6       1       2

1994

 Attempts  11      2       1       1       1       0       3       1       1       7
 Kills  3       3       1       1       2       0       4       0       0       0
 Total  14      5       2       2       3       0       7       1       1       7

1995

 Attempts  29      1       10      2       2       1       0       9       5       21
 Kills  4       6       3       0       0       2       8       3       0       0
 Total  33      7       13      2       2       3       8       12      5       21

1996

 Attempts  149     4       30      2       1       1       0       5       18      156
 Kills  31      13      2       1       2       4       18      14      6       1
 Total  180     17      32      3       3       5       18      19      24      157

Total

 Attempts  195     12      42      7       6       2       4       19      25      186
 Kills  41      26      7       3       7       7       31      19      6       1
 Total  236     38      49      10      13      9       35      38      31      187
 Success rate (%)       18      68      16      30      53      63      88      50      19      0.5

[edit] GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Elephant/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

[edit] Initial assessment

I haven't completed a full review yet, but my initial assessment is that this article needs a bit more work to meet the Good Article criteria. The lead section is reasonably good, and summarizes the article fairly well. The prose appears reasonable, though I am not finished looking at it in details. The article appears to satisfy the completeness criterion (#3), containing all of the major topics that I would expect for an article on a biological organism (taxonomy/classification, physical characteristics, behavior, human intervention and culture, and endangerment issues). The initial issues I can find right now include:

  • Insufficient reference citations. There are many sections and subsections that are completely devoid of inline citations, which is an issue with criterion #2 of the GA criteria. Any important facts and figures need a citation, as well as any information that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Also, the reference citation formatting should be fixed as well -- I see several references that are just unformatted, external links -- please include full citation information for these (author, title, publisher, date of publication, and date of URL retrieval if it's accessible via the internet). The important of this is, if the URL ever becomes 404 not found, the information in the citation can assist readers in tracking it down and verifying it.
  • This image: Image:Re-exposure of elephant - lahugala park1.jpg appears to have an image copyright tag problem.
  • This image: Image:Ele-brain.JPG has a request tag on it to convert to PNG or SVG format (not a GA issue, but I am just pointing it out.
  • The 'Family classification' section is pretty much empty of content, only containing a 'see also' link. Empty sections should not be present in articles, and should be either filled with content, or see also links moved to the 'see also' section. In this case, I would think that the Elephant classification link can be moved to a 'see also' link under the 'taxonomy and evolution' section.
  • Sections with lots of bullet points, such as 'Elephants in culture' or 'Effect on the environment' should be converted to prose. These sections also have citation issues (lack of).
  • Try to minimize the use of multiple third and fourth level section headers, sticking primarily with main sections, and a couple of well-thought out and organized subsections. An example of where section headers aren't used very well is the 'elephant calves' section under 'Reproduction and life cycle'. You might also want to check WP:MSH for other tips on properly using section headers and subsection headers. One other issue I can find is that the article title itself (elephant) should not be used in section or subsection headers.
  • The 'external links' section is a bit long. You might consider pruning it a bit, per guidelines at WP:EL. Some of these links could be used as reference citations, and thereby effectively moved from 'external links' to 'references', helping to solve the lack of citations issue (above).
  • It's odd that there's no mention of the United States Republican Party, considering that the elephant is the party's mascot. The infamous Stephen Colbert incident is also not mentioned in the culture section, either, which is odd considering that the incident involved Wikipedia itself (this article, actually). I'm not saying we need a whole section on this incident, but it might be interesting to at least point it out in a sentence or two.

Overall, I think there's lots of work left to be done. It's almost a borderline 'fail', but I'll give editors the benefit of the doubt, and put it on hold for now. But there's still lots of work to be done, primarily with inserting appropriate reference citations.

Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 15:04, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and fail this nomination, as the on hold time has elapsed and I have not seen any responses to this review. Furthermore, there are now several tags in the article indicating issues. The article as a whole is still very under-referenced, which is it's primary issue. Other things that need changing include improper usage of 3rd and 4th level headers (e.g. under 'Reproduction and life cycle', don't start that section immediately with the 4th level header 'Elephant calves'; there should be some introductory text before the subsection). Also, try and focus on including 2nd-level (main) sections, using 3rd-level subsections as sparingly as possible. It would be preferable to start a new main section rather than separating subsections into 3rd- and 4th-level subsections.
At this time, the article still needs a lot of work for GA status. It can be renominated once it meets the Good article criteria. You may also consider posting a peer review request to get more opinions on the article's improvement. Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 15:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pop Culture Section

I think we should add one. Other articles that are about animals have pop culture sections, so why not this one? In this section, it can discuss Colbert. This may or may not help with the elephant tripling problem, but that's not the point. It would talk about elephants in pop culture and it would give Colbert's followers what they want. Footballfan190 (talk) 08:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

No. See WP:ASR. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:37, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, a short one at least. This what the section elephant in culture was about! but it got cut completely! I agree it needs trimming work and improvement in style, but just cutting it to avoid the problem is not a good solution either. Please bring it back and improve it! --Seb951 (talk) 18:40, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I think the article is better off without a pop culture section. -- Donald Albury 23:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
What about a culture section? They don't have to be bad, look at Bird#Religion, folklore and culture. It is possible to write these sections well and make them relevant. I was expecting a reference to Ganesha, Shooting an Elephant, White Elephants and yes, even Dumbo. Once it has been written you need to keep an eye on it to stop things like "There was an elephant in an episode of Kim Possible" creeping in, but that shouldn't stop there from being a section in the first place. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:31, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Irrespective of this discussion, removing the whole Elephants in culture section was definitely not the right solution to deal with the problem. --Novil Ariandis (talk) 09:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why the section was removed again since it does not contain any information about elephants in popular culture, so the argument most sentiments expressed on the talk page were against this is not valid. --Novil Ariandis (talk) 11:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Agreed! Argument most sentiments expressed on the talk page were against this is not valid since based on the talk page its a 4 against 2 decisions to have an elephant in culture section. So please bring it back and improve it! --Seb951 (talk) 12:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
I am opposed to having a pop culture section in this article. What part of "most" didn't make sense to you? if the vote is 4-2, then twice as many editors did NOT want the pop culture section as wanted it. This is "most". There is so much pop culture about elephants that it can easily swamp this article. Why not create a separate article? Bob98133 (talk) 13:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Firstly, it's not a vote. Secondly, the confusion here is that two sections were removed; "Elephants in culture", and "Elephants in popular culture". The latter is just worthless cruft and we're best rid of it. The former may, with some rewriting, be a valuable part of the article. But really, that whole section of the article needs reworked significantly. What could happen is that the cultural elements which were removed could be integrated with other sections; for instance, the veneration of war elephants could be moved into the war elephants section. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 69.208.68.105

This is why Colbert made this edit [[5]]. If you watch the clip from his show, you will clearly notice that he pulled out a laptop and edited Oregon and called it Idaho's Portugal. He even admitted to it. This was the only edit made in late July or early August of 2006 that made the statement that Oregon is Idaho's Portugal. Here is a clip to watch for proof [here]. 216.93.231.149 (talk) 05:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Super, now why are you mentioning it here? There's not going to be a section for "Elephants in pop culture" just because Colbert made a joke on his tv show. It was funny, but we dont need to mention it here, that would just make more people want to edit it like Colbert said. Disturbedfan24 (talk) 04:06, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Size contradictions

This passage has contradictory statements about the size of elephants.

Under the new two species classification, Loxodonta africana refers specifically to the Savanna Elephant, the largest of all elephants. In fact, it is the largest land animal in the world, standing 3.1 metres (10 ft) to 4 metres (13 ft) at the shoulder and weighing approximately 7,000 kilograms (15,000 lb). The average male stands about 3 metres (10 ft) tall at the shoulder and weighs about 5500 (12000 lb) to 6,000 kilograms (13,000 lb), the female being much smaller. Most often, Savanna Elephants are found in open grasslands, marshes, and lakeshores. They range over much of the savanna zone south of the Sahara. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.238.149 (talk) 16:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I found a couple of reliable sources and fixed it. -- Donald Albury 20:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The number of elephants has tripled in the last 6 months though... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.2.168.230 (talk) 16:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

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