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Good articleBrown bear has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Did You Know Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 1, 2006Featured article candidateNot promoted
February 11, 2010Peer reviewReviewed
February 27, 2024Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 29, 2024.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in some rare cases, large Siberian tigers prey on adult brown bears?
Current status: Good article

Queued images

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  • Grizzly
    Grizzly
  • Blond juvenile NM brown bear among pinyons, detail
    Blond juvenile NM brown bear among pinyons, detail

Did you know nomination

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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: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 11:59, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYK toolbox

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Created by Wolverine XI (talk). Self-nominated at 05:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Brown bear; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article looks well sourced and balanced, and was nominated within 7 days of GA. I can't access the hook article, but it looks like it might be about children's literature specifically, does it also mention Western literature in general? The hook is interesting enough, but I can't help thinking some of the other facts in the article (like them being hunted by tigers or using tools!) would be even better hooks. Can you add some alts? BuySomeApples (talk) 23:36, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes much better! I swapped the illustration for the photo from the infobox, but otherwise this nom looks good. BuySomeApples (talk) 21:58, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

serial monogamy

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i'm going to remove the reference to serial monogamy since I don't believe it is correct or supported by the current citation-- Brown bear mating system is better described as polygynandry and I'll add citation to a more recent review article as further support.[1][2].

--xarzin (talk) 22:21, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Mammalian Species- Ursus arctos" (PDF). American Society of Mammalogists, Smith College. 23 April 1993. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 March 2017.
  2. ^ Steyaert, Sam M. J. G.; Endrestøl, Anders; Hackländer, Klaus; Swenson, Jon E; Zedrosser, Andreas (2012). "The mating system of the brown bear Ursus arctos". Mammal Review. 42 (1): 12–34. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2907.2011.00184.x. ISSN 1365-2907. Retrieved 2025-01-01.

Largest carnivoran?

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  • What I think should be changed (format using {{textdiff}}):

"Of the carnivorans, it is rivaled in size only by its closest relative, the polar bear, which is much less variable in size..."

  • Why it should be changed:

The largest animal in carnivora is the Southern Elephant Seal; this statement isn't correct. I propose reducing the granularity of the statement to Ursidae.

  • References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):

Southern_elephant_seal#Description

Pinniphead (talk) 23:09, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Per WP:CIRC the reference provided above is not considered "reliable" and cannot be used in support of a request. Of course, if you can find a reliable source that directly supports the request, we will take another look at it. Anaxial (talk) 23:33, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nevertheless, as Pinniphead points out, the statement is trivially incorrect currently. Reasonable remedies would be limiting to bears (see below) or terrestrial carnivora (which might need an additional citation).
This is an uncited lead sentence, it must be paraphrasing the statement under 'Description' which says "... the largest coastal populations attain sizes broadly similar to those of the largest living bear species, the polar bear.[1]"
I don't think that is a very good reference for the claim and the paragraph needs a little general clean up as well. I might take a crack at that first and come back to this. -- xarzin (talk) 01:41, 5 January 2025 (UTC) xarzin (talk) 01:41, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I made some edits to the description/size section to clean it up and remove some of the figures in particular not supported in the references cited. I don't think I changed the spirit or much of the substance of the section, but please edit and/or revert as folks feel is appropriate. I did make an effort to find references for some the figures I removed, but was not successful.
Finally, I did make a minor edit to the lead to correct it and I think it is now consistent with the cited material in the description/size section.
-- xarzin (talk) 04:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of introducing unnecessary mass changes you could have simply rectified the error by adding "land" before "Carnivoran". It's as simple as that. If you do, however, feel that I've somehow made an error in judgment please let me know. ✿ WolveríneX-eye ✿ 07:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
agreed bear and land/terrestrial are about equal. bear was more in line with the literature already cited and since there wasn't an obvious source saying they were the 2nd largest terrestrial carnivora I went with that. open to correction ofc.
on the size section there appeared to be a few problems which I tried to rectify by changing the least correct/relevant content as possible (but again open to being reverted or correct or amended):
  1. some of the citations did not support the statements they were attached to and there wasn't an obvious editing mistake to point to the correct citations that I could notice.
  2. some of the information was inaccurate or misleading
  3. a tendency toward a lot of specific mass figures from primary sources that were confusing and didn't add anything to the main points of the paragraph or could not be found in the references cited.
-- xarzin (talk) 08:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I see you've already reverted everything. At minimum I would suggest the following:
  • clarify the lead to be about body mass, since the statement might not be true for linear dimensions
  • take another look at the figures and citations in the size section there appears to be something wrong.
  • additionally, in the size section there are unqualified statements that only apply to north american brown bears.
--xarzin (talk) 08:51, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I'll take a look at the citations in about an hour or two. Just gotta finish something up. ✿ WolveríneX-eye ✿ 08:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Christiansen, P. (1999). "What size were Arctodus simus and Ursus spelaeus (Carnivora: Ursidae)?". Annales Zoologici Fennici. 36 (2): 93–102. JSTOR 23735739.
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