Talk:Polar bear

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Polar bear is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on February 27, 2024.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 6, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed
April 10, 2016	Peer review	Reviewed
August 9, 2023	Peer review	Reviewed
September 21, 2023	Featured article candidate	Promoted
Current status: Featured article

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Territoriality in brown bears

The article states that "unlike brown bears, polar bears are not territorial". I don't think this is a valid comparison, since as far as I know brown bears aren't territorial in the classic sense of the term either, and only engage in conflicts when certain resources are directly threatened by others of their kind. This is also supported by the Wikipedia article about the species. TheBlackCaiman (talk) 12:52, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Polar bear range map

My impression is that Polar bear range map is partly wrong regarding its message that there are polar bears on Greenland's inland ice, see c:File talk:Polar bear range map.png. Unfortunately, both editors involved seem to be inactive since 2018 and 2020 respectively. Is anybody able to modify the map? --Kuhni74 (talk) 09:23, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

may I resume my question? --Kuhni74 (talk) 22:19, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well lmma give it a try

Or find somebody to help out Kyle4835 (talk) 16:27, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Kuhni74 (talk) 17:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Conservation status: outdated source

Polar bears are listed as “vulnerable” on this page, but the source for that came out in 2015 (8-9 years ago). Obviously this information can’t be updated without any new data, but we should look for more recent sources on the polar bear’s conservation status. LordOfWalruses (talk) 17:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe there are any newer sources and this pdf explains why. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 16:56, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dichromat

It states in Characteristics that polar bears are dichromats and lack the cones for green. This was changed sometime since last August, but I haven’t figured out the revision history interface to figure out when.

Mammalian dichromats have cones sensitive to more-or-less blue and more-or-less green, but lack cones sensitive to more-or-less red. If polar bears lacked green-sensitive cones, they would be monochromats, so this is likely vandalism.

The previous text mentioned blue-violet and yellow-green, but lacking a reference, I think it is best simply to specify that they are dichromats, which is linked. Applying human color terms to peak sensitivities in nanometers is somewhat subjective, and unless the specific peaks for polar bears, or at least for Ursidae, have been measured, it’s less than useful.

I’d fix it, but I haven’t done much editing in many years, and I don’t want to just jump into a semi-protected article, especially when the bulk of recent edits have been by a small group of editors. Curtis Clark (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The source says that polar bears have L (for yellow but I think this is an error, it should be red) and S cone cells (for blue-violet) and that "humans have an additional cone in the middle that is most sensitive to green, giving us trichromatic vision". LittleJerry (talk) 19:54, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Axl? LittleJerry (talk) 13:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found this reference by Peichl. It states that polar bears have L- and S-cones. They don't have M-cones. This seems to be a feature of semi-aquatic mammals including river otters and pygmy hippotamuses. Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:09, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Axl Can some L cones be suited more for yellow light then red? LittleJerry (talk) 21:45, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I'm not sure. I found this reference. I shall keep looking. Axl ¤ [Talk] 00:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article appears to confirm what I wrote. Curtis Clark (talk) 06:17, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is already an FA. It doesn't need student editors which often do them no good. Try less developed articles please. LittleJerry (talk) 20:35, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy ping User:Ian (Wiki Ed). Besides Polar bear, the article Abby (The Last of Us) also needs to be removed from students since they are actually maintained by the editors. 2001:4455:3AA:B000:54C6:1FB7:27AA:408 (talk) 12:48, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd second this. We have literally hundreds of thousands of underdeveloped taxon articles that could use some love and would be improved tremendously by a student editor. This in't one of those. I understand that new editors like trying to improve high-traffic articles, but I'd recommend others like warthog, stork, or pangolin as examples of articles that do need some work. AryKun (talk) 14:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pangolin is an irredeemable mess until the scope is narrowed to the only extant family Manidae, same issue for the hyrax page and the Procaviidae family. Maybe it'd be of interest to make move requests someday? PrimalMustelid (talk) 11:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please work on honey badger. Wolverine XI ^{(den • 🐾)} 14:38, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's an excellent replacement and would be much more suitable for a student editor to work on. AryKun (talk) 17:38, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've complained about this in the past too, with no one listening; there is no need for these assignments to include featured articles, which they can barely improve, but instead often make worse. A general complaint about this should probably be raised in a more central venue where it can be seen by all. FunkMonk (talk) 16:19, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right now the Dashboard emails students when they assign an FA or GA and ask them to pick a less well-developed article. Sage is working on tool to prevent this at the point where the students assign themselves articles (see this post) which hopefully will be active before too long. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia male editor bias is surely showing

Well, let's start from the fact that you can't just write anything you want just by providing one very weird source[*], especially when there are so many studies that not only contradict it, but are better structured: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359039968_An_Investigation_of_the_Sociality_and_Behaviour_of_Captive_Polar_Bears_Housed_in_Bachelor_Groups and to an extent https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352948828_Polar_Bear_Maternal_Care_Neonatal_Development_and_Social_Behavior. That study is a joke and an outlier, to quote it to postulate male dominance in polar bears (a documented solitary species, I remind you) is biased and done in bad faith. If you don't edit this nonsense you will only show the title of my topic to be true.

[*] - I can hardly call it a study, since it doesn't even have any method in it, nor any references outside of the author referencing himself, just check it out - https://www.arlis.org/docs/vol1/E/Walrus/Russian/Ovsyanikov.2005.BehaviorPolarBearCoastalCongreg.ZoolZhurnal.pdf - very very ridiulous. Also made by a russian scientist which is very telling, since that country is known for having terrible research (source: I am russian). 95.24.156.222 (talk) 09:50, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first study observes only 4 male polar bears and so I fail to see how it could say anything about male dominance. The chapter cited is heavily focused on maternal behaviour; what little it says about intersexual interactions consists of talking about hard these are to study and mentioning males forming large aggregations on land, which is mentioned in the article. Your disdain for Russian research aside, you also don't have any reasons for thinking that the 2005 study cited is unreliable. You really think that people are trying to be sexist by talking about how male polar bears twice the size of female ones are dominant over them? AryKun (talk) 11:00, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]