Talk:hystricomorph

RFV discussion: June–December 2023
Rfv-sense


 * 1) Any Old World porcupine of the family Hystricidae

This was the original definition, added in 2008 by WF- who knows about as much about taxonomy as he does about nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. It's true that the sum of its Ancient Greek parts adds up to "in the form of a porcupine", but he got the taxonomic rank all wrong. The term really refers to one of the major subdivisions of the world's rodents (it has to do with jaw muscles being of the type that porcupines have), which includes things like naked mole rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, capybaras, cane rats, gundis, and even New World porcupines. While porcupines are [a very small] part of the hystricomorphs, pretty much all of the Google Books hits I've seen refer to things that are definitely not Old World porcupines as hystricomorphs.

I was tempted to just change it, but the definition has been there for almost a decade and a half and it's theoretically possible that someone, somewhere has used it in this sense sometime in the past few centuries. The hard part is going to be figuring out which sense is meant in passages that mention only porcupines, since this sense is, by definition, a subset of the wider one- all Old World porcupines are hystricomorphs in both senses. Pinging, who may be able to help- though I'm sure they have better things to do. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:09, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Failed - We can assume Wonderfool was being lame Denazz (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2023 (UTC)