Talk:Long-tailed spiny rat

A fact from Long-tailed spiny rat appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 August 2016 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that some long-tailed spiny rats do not have tails at all?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2016/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Long-tailed spiny rat.

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WTF "The tails are missing on some individuals"??

Can you imagine an article on humans that had unexplained note, "The ears are missing on some individuals." The missing tails of some individual rat mentioned in the veterinary research paper were due to living in the wild, and not a species characteristic. 172.5.154.148 (talk) 13:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strange. I agree that is completely irrelevant and have therefore simply removed the statement. Deli nk (talk) 14:00, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have replaced it, it was relevant enough to be featured in the paper that cites the fact and is interesting as they're called "long-tailed" rats, so it's somewhat odd to have a "long-tailed" rat without a tail. If you wish to expand the article to state that those rats were individual who had actually lost them (or whatever the paper itself says), feel free to do so. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:14, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So the paper says biopsies were taken only from the base of the tails from 25 rodents with or without scars or lesions, except that a biopsy from one ear was taken in the case of three Proechimys longicaudatus that were missing tails. which doesn't make any kind of assertion that it was or was not a species characteristic. They seemed particularly interested in those three having taken biopsies of them, so I don't see why the fact should be omitted. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:16, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Small animals lose tails all the time to predators, etc. There is nothing "odd" whatsoever about an individual long-tailed rat that has lost a tail. It is completely irrelevant to this encyclopedia article to note that some of these animals lose their tails. I agree with 172.5.154.148 above that this is just as bad as if an article on humans had an unexplained note, "The ears are missing on some individuals." It is relevant to be mentioned (certainly not "featured"!) in the scientific paper because it is a description of their biopsy method - but an encyclopedia article is something completely different and the this tidbit related to collection methods is completely irrelevant here. Deli nk (talk) 15:44, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The paper also notes that some had scars and some didn't, so presumably those without scars quite probably didn't have tails to start with. It's perfectly cromulent to include this information in an article about rats with "long-tailed" in the title. This seems somewhat like making an incredibly big deal out of something that is verified and factually correct so I'd suggest we all get back to improving Wikipedia. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By the logic you are using, we should add to the article the fact that some Long-tailed spiny rats have scars. Deli nk (talk) 18:42, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's not true. I'm sorry you don't understand. But we're done here. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:50, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is not clear how many rodents were included in the study. If 3 out of 4 of these rats were without tails it was noteworthy, if 3 out of 100 less so. This study seems to have had 25 rodents of several species so it does seem significant. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:43, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]