Talk:Protopterus

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Unsourced information removed

In 2009, some clever fellow decided to make an edit about how in Uganda they view Protopterus as a "sister fish" and thus women abstain from eating them. This was unsourced but for some reason wasn't tagged with citation needed until recently. A quick Google doesn't bring anything, although quite a few sites in the intervening span (nearly eight years!) added this factoid to their info on the African lungfish. None are from before 2009. If anyone has a pre-2009 source, feel free to add it back, but I'm pretty confident that this was a remarkably long-lived hoax. RexSueciae (talk) 01:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

After doing considerable reading of the cited sources, and searching for others, I have found no information to corroborate the assertion that the lungfish is a "sister fish." I have found the "sister fish" claim mentioned several times at second hand, often citing a source which does not contain that claim (to the best of my searching) and always after 2009. Examples include the 2013 PhD thesis of John Kiremerwa Walakira, which notes in its background information on Protopterus that the African lungfish is considered a "sister fish" in Uganda. Walakira makes this claim twice, and cites several sources: among them being a government report authored by Mukasa and Reynolds (which mentions Uganda and Protopterus but does not seem to contain the "sister fish" claim), the Encyclopedia of Fishes entry written by Bruton (which is cited for this Wikipedia page, and of which I located a physical copy so I can testify that there is no mention of the claim at all -- in fact, no mention at all of the lungfish being eaten!), and an <redacted link> article by Fulgencio Kayiso which had an interesting anecdote about lungfish taboo (which I added to the page, with a proper citation because it seems like a reliable journal) but nothing about the specific claim of a "sister fish" prohibition! I have thus come to the conclusion that the claim about Protopterus being considered a "sister fish" is entirely the creation of the screwy wit whose IP address is 70.15.42.23. We have seen that 1) there are no reliable sources which make the claim pre-2009, and 2) the only sources which mention the claim post-2009 are either Wikipedia clones or improperly cited. (Another example of this hoax entering a "reliable" source is this 2012 working paper by the Indian Ocean Commission.) RexSueciae (talk) 23:56, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

the academicjournals ref is from a predatory publisher - i redacted it in this diff. Jytdog (talk) 19:29, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just saw this again -- someone with a good eye already got to the article, but I feel that leaving the link up (if nothing else, to trace the path of the "sister fish" claim) would be a good idea on the talk page. It's of no big deal, I'm sure anybody can see the page history if they have a truly burning desire to check out Mr. Kayiso's (questionable?) article. RexSueciae (talk) 05:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is also mentioned in Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia#Extant_for_4–7_years_2. Glad we dodged this risk of WP:CITOGENESIS. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:59, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nile perch

The relevance of the introduction of the Nile Perch is not made clear. Did that reduce fishing for lungfish? Increase it? Why is this mentioned?Bill (talk) 01:18, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]