Category talk:Seals

RFM discussion: January–February 2023
as our resident species experts. It looks strange to me that Category:Eared seals is not a subcategory of Category:Seals. Renaming the latter would make this less strange. Benwing2 (talk) 05:09, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In part, the issue arises because common-knowledge-/language-based vernacular categories don't well correspond to taxonomic categories, especially modern ones. The words don't even make much sense if one has an amateur's understanding of the entirety of potential membership in such categories. On this kind of matter I defer to ChuckE, who applies and maintains the vernacular-name categories. I would vote for Category:Earless seals, but ChuckE has my proxy. I don;t know to what extent these categories correspond to taxonomic categories. I think "earless seals" would correspond to family Phocidae, as Category:Eared seals would correspond to family Otaridae, but it is possible that the categories should correspond to something at the level of superfamily or something else below the rank of order (Pinnipedia includes both and other families as well.). DCDuring (talk) 14:27, 27 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm not really sure why I created Category:Eared seals under Category:Pinnipeds rather than Category:Seals. Given the small number of members, I probably wouldn't create such a category today, though it's not quite small enough to delete now that it exists. This part of the category tree is a bit awkward, anyway, because the only pinnipeds that aren't seals are walruses and a few extinct taxa. Walruses are really seals that developed adaptations to living in the Arctic and feeding for molluscs on the sea floor. They're closer to the eared seals, even if they don't have ears themselves. Still, most people definitely don't think of them as seals.
 * As for the name: I'm not all that fond of "earless seals"- it seems like a term someone came up with so they would have something to call seals that weren't "eared". "True seals" isn't much better: the fact that the English language arose in an area with no eared seals and the term seal originally only referred to the earless ones is more of a historical accident than anything else. If you didn't grow up in Atlantic coastal areas, the seal you think of when the word is mentioned is probably the, which is an eared seal. It's the main species in captivity and has been trained to perform in circuses and the like.
 * There's no really clean way to handle this. I'm inclined to move the eared seals under the seals and leave things as they are, just to minimize disruption. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:42, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The cleanest way to handle it would be to rename the categories CAT:Phocids and CAT:Otariids, though those of course are liable to the objection that they aren't familiar words. Nevertheless, we did merge CAT:Doves and CAT:Pigeons into CAT:Columbids despite the unfamiliarity of that word. We certainly shouldn't merge the phocids and the otariids into a single category such as CAT:Seals, since they're not a monophyletic group. All that said, however, "earless seal" is a real term used in biology, not something we just made up ourselves, so I have no objection to renaming the phocids' category CAT:Earless seals. (Calling them "true seals" would seem to imply that sea lions, fur seals and walruses are "fake seals".) —Mahāgaja · talk 17:28, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * A compromise I often use is adding a common name to the taxonomic one: "Phocid seals", "Otariid seals". The common name is only there as an aid to those who don't know the taxonomy, so in this case it doesn't matter whether "seals" is a taxonomically valid group. That wasn't possible with the Columbids, because there wasn't a suitable common name for the larger group. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:30, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Those are fine too. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:15, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Any objections? Chuck's suggestion sounds good to me. Benwing2 (talk) 21:35, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I defer to Chuck's judgment on the vernacular name categories. It's a softer thing than taxonomic names, requiring balancing of language and taxonomy. DCDuring (talk) 17:40, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I prefer cat:Earless seals, but I don't object to Chuck's suggestion. &mdash; excarnateSojourner (talk &middot; contrib) 05:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Mahāgaja Do I understand correctly that your statement about them not being a monophyletic group contradicts Wikipedia's first paragraph? &mdash; excarnateSojourner (talk &middot; contrib) 05:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I said that the group of phocids + otariids (to the exclusion of walruses) is not a monophyletic group, which does not contradict Wikipedia. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:30, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Seems like we have consensus here to use the terms Phocid seals and Otariid seals. Just to verify though, the proposal is to rename 'Seals' -> 'Phocid seals' and 'Eared seals' -> 'Otariid seals'? Do we put them directly under 'Pinnipeds' or do we create an intermediate 'Seals' category? Currently there are only the two subcategories 'Seals' and 'Eared seals' of 'Pinnipeds' but I don't know if there are other types of pinnipeds that theoretically could have their own categories. Benwing2 (talk) 05:38, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * AFAIK the only pinnipeds besides phocids and otariids are walruses, but since there is only one extant species of walrus, there isn't really a need for a CAT:Walruses. And the phocids and otariids do not form a monophyletic group to the exclusion of walruses, so there shouldn't (or at least needn't) be a category for those two together. So I'd say CAT:Pinnipeds should contain entries about walruses directly as well as two subcategories: CAT:Phocid seals and CAT:Otariid seals. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:30, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's correct: all living pinnipeds are in three families: Odobenidae (walruses), Otariidae (eared seals), and Phocidae (earless seals). There are fossils that can't be assigned to any of these, but they're known by taxonomically-based names. Seals aren't a taxonomically valid unit, because the eared seals are more closely related to the walruses than to the earless seals.
 * Neglected in all of this are the smaller languages, which mostly have one or two terms and don't necessarily divide things according to the taxonomy. For such languages, it would be nice not to require people to know the taxonomy in order to figure out which category to use. Unfortunately, the only way to have categories that are complete and that can be split into manageable units is to base them on taxonomy. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:12, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * IMO, if a language has a word that means "eared or earless seal but not a walrus", it should go directly in that language's CAT:Pinnipeds. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:32, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Done. 'Seals' -> 'Phocid seals', 'Eared seals' -> 'Otariid seals'. Benwing2 (talk) 21:15, 26 February 2023 (UTC)