Talk:Dire Wolf

fantasy game usage

What about its use in many fantasy based genres, the dire wolf seems to be a constant reference to a greater version, or form, of the normal wolf. I was searching for the fantasy variant, and have yet to find any good references...

Seems like a good idea. The content from Dire Wolves should be merged into this article, perhaps as a new section on fictional occurrences.Deli nk 21:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I found some, but I can't add it as a new section, even on this discussion page, because someone keeps deleting it as soon as I add it. Check this page's history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.29.147.189 (talk) 20:51, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

What mass extinction?

The current text states until its extinction about 10,000 years ago during a time of mass extinction of many large North American mammals. However, on the page linked to for Mass extinction there is nothing about any mass exctinctions about 10,000 years ago.

Holocene extinction —Preceding unsigned comment added by GJaxon (talk • contribs) 19:39, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

New Pictures

I have some new picture that I'd like to put on the artical. -- Hurricane Devon (Talk), September 17, 2005

Prehistoric mammal category thoughts

My personal opinion is that while it is good to have the distinctions between the different Epochs, the category of prehistoric mammals should still be included as many in the general public are unaware of which specific Epoch their mammal was from. Essentially, it would be like having two card catalog references. I agree that the Epoch distinctions are more accurate and if I had to chose one or the other, that would be the one I would keep. But I think there is still value in maintaining the old cat. Or perhaps prehistoric mammals could become just a list of, provided all of hte current mammals ended up on the list. Any thoughts?

--aremisasling 21:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization and disambiguation

UtherSRG, the capitalization style is meant for article titles, not for refering to animals in the body of the article. When you reverted the capitalizations, you also brought back the ambiguated links that I had corrected, so I reverted it back. If you must recapitalize everything, I won't fight you, but please leave the links alone or pipe them to avoid redirects. Coyoty 21:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

UtherSRG, if you insist on capitalizing animals, at least please be consistent about it. A mix of capitalized and uncapitalized names looks really ugly and unprofessional in an encyclopedia. Lets have some concensus about this. Coyoty 04:03, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Cultural references

Does the song "Dire Wolf" have anything to do with dire wolves other than the title? If not, should it be included on name association alone? Coyoty 02:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it does, the description doesn't indicate any. If there is none, I would support removing it. MarcusGraly 22:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Here are the lyrics: [link to copyvio website removed]: It does mention wolves a fair amount. MarcusGraly 18:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Dire Wolf is a song by the famous Canadian band "The Tragically Hip" Canking 15:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Or, you know, the Grateful Dead. They most likely did it first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.141.107.24 (talk) 03:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Mythic beasts

I took the liberty of removing claims that various wolf like mythic beasts were in fact Dire Wolves. These claims seem to based on the myth that a Dire Wolf was a huge Grey Wolf and are unverifiable. MarcusGraly 22:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Citations

The article claims that dire wolves were smaller than grey wolves, but I have heard otherwise, from the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example. Should someone change this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 139.140.194.172 (talk • contribs) .

Yes, if you can find a reliable source for the information. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

"Misconception"

The article states that it is a misconception that dire wolves were bigger than grey wolves, then goes on to say that they were in fact bigger. Based on the numbers in the gray wolf article, the biggest dire wolves weighed half again as much as the biggest grey wolves. That seems like a pretty significant size difference--not a misconception at all. I'm going to change. Nareek 21:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

--It is a misconcepton. According to the links on the page itself, dire wolves were only slightly larger than gray wolves (110 lbs). Some people have been playing too much D&D. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.175.119.20 (talk) 15:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to say that dire wolves were larger/chunkier than gray wolves, but that they weighed 110 lbs--which is right in the middle of the average weight range for the gray wolf. So was it larger/chunkier or not? 70.213.43.203 (talk) 23:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

110 lbs. is not the average for either the gray wolf (except possibly in some parts of Alaska or Siberia) or the dire wolf.

Most places, a gray wolf (timber wolf subspecies) is something like 60-75 pounds. The possible weight range is huge, though (20 pounds for an Arabian Wolf subspecies up to a record-setting Alaskan giant of 180 lbs). Since 100 pounds is right in the middle of that range, people tend to think that wolves average around 100 lbs. or a little more. Especially in temperate latitudes, they do not.

The dire wolf does not average that weight either. [This museum website] says 125-175 pounds. [This] uses the 110 pounds, but that is the smallest estimate you will find. I tend to see that more often as a low-end figure. Vultur (talk) 19:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Images

I wonder if anyone can find some public license images generated by a computer for this article. That would be great. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mathchem271828 (talk • contribs) 20:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

capitalization

"Grey Wolf" and "Dire Wolf" is not a proper name - I don't believe it should be capitalized. ClockworkTroll 21:27, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Neither the title nor the name in the text should be capitalized. I'll change this if there are no objections. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Night Gyr (talk • contribs) 17:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

I object. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Why? It's nonstandard to capitalize species names. We don't capitalize rainbow trout or human, and it looks weird to me to capitalize common words. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but we should. The rationale at WP:BIRD is sound. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The capitalization convention in WP:BIRD is based on the conventions of ornithological journals, and it's not clear that journals about mammals have the same convention. Even if it were, it's dubious to extend the convention of a specialist literature--where it may make sense to capitalize only one kind of common noun, because it's the particular class of common noun that you're interested in--to a general encyclopedia, where you have an interest in every category of common noun. I think the bird capitalization rule is a mistake and should not be a precedent mammal articles should follow. Nareek 12:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

When, exactly, did wolf become a proper noun? I suggest a move to Dire wolf (which is now one of the stupidest & most needless redirects I've seen). TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 10:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the move and have added a move template. SpectrumDT (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

This was rejected once, and I will continue to oppose such a move. Please read and understand the rationale at WP:BIRD. Also, there is a stalemate-concensus not to move mammal articles. - UtherSRG (talk) 23:30, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The rules at WP:BIRD are specific to ornithology and are stated not to be applicable to other topics. Those rules exist because of a standardization movement within the ornithology community. That movement is not relevant to other communities. Meanwhile we have incoherent capitalization for article titles and body text. The inconsistency is ugly, looks like illiteracy, and has no basis in standard practice. This sophomoric insistence on capitalizing common nouns is ugly, looks like illiteracy, and has no basis in standard practices. While the ornithological community’s rationale and recommendations may make sense for them, applied more broadly that reasoning means any noun should be capitalized because any noun is a specialized term for some field of study. It’s nonsense. Within scholarly circles, writers can always resort to genus/species to disambiguate if necessary—and lo and behold, species is not even capitalized by convention throughout the biological world. I do not see any legalistic or rational reason to bow to UtherSRG’s personal notion of How The World Should Work.Strebe (talk) 00:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

See also?

The article has under "See also" a link to Extinct animals in popular culture. However, that article does not exist. I think it is very stupid to reference a non-existent article like this one, so I'm removing it. I will also add a few real "See also"s while I'm at it. Garnet avi 11:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Reference

There is a reference so I will remove tag. Enlil Ninlil 19:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

why "dire"?

Is there (or was there, at the time it was named) evidence that this species was fiercer than the modern wolf? --Trovatore (talk) 01:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

"dire" is just a word. because the animal is only known from fossils, theres no way to known if it was fiercer or not, the same way most of the "terrible lizards" were likely not terrible at all 69.233.5.249 (talk) 20:09, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the term "dire wolf" is older than the discovery of the fossils to which it has been assigned by taxonomists - in legend for instance. Dire wolves appear frequently in fantasy novels, and artistic license means their descriptions don't always match the fossil record. In the A Song of Ice and Fire series, for instance, they are described as being proportionally taller and leaner than normal wolves, which is kind of the opposite of reality. It's not clear to me if authors are borrowing the term from biology or from some other source that is of older origin. SharkD  Talk  10:31, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Most likely not. A lot of fantasy and RPG bestiaries are inspired by paleontology. Serpent-people, Voormis, and Gnophkeh (inspired by dinosaurs and cavemen respectively) of the Cthulhu mythos for example. And early paleontologists tend to be... theatrical in their naming. It's interesting to note that the etymological origins of the English word dire probably points back to greek deinos, 'terrible', the same word used for Dinosaurs. That said, the origin of the word Mammoth points to the discovery of its fossils long before modern paleontology (they were believed to be gigantic creatures who burrowed like moles). Furthermore Ice Age bones of Mammoth, Elephants, and allies most probably originated the ubiquitous folklore of Cyclops in cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The same thing can be said for the pancultural existence of Dragons which probably originated from chance excavations of their fossils compounded with encounters with large snakes, crocodiles, and sea animals.

Wolves do feature prominently in a lot of mythologies, but were never referred to as 'dire' and aren't differentiated as a species, merely as unusual or divine individuals (e.g. the Norse Fenrir).--Astepintooblivion (talk) 10:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

a quick google books search turned up three uses of the term "dire wolf" by famous poets published before the discovery of the fossils. Interestingly, two different dictionary sites have etymology notes claiming the "origin" or "first use" of "dire wolf" was in "1920-25" or "1925". I attempted to post the sources on this talk page, but the information was quickly deleted. Please view the history.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.29.147.189 (talk) 21:52, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

That thread was deleted because you did not bother to explain what context they were supposed to be in at the time.--Mr Fink (talk) 22:11, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the species name "dirus" might be a give-away to what's oldest. FunkMonk (talk) 22:03, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Crossbreeding with the Gray Wolf?

Is it known if the dire wolf was capable of crossbreeding with the gray wolf? Are there any fossil specimens of possible hybrids? 64.180.93.200 (talk) 22:04, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

If there are, then they have not been found or published yetMariomassone (talk) 22:11, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Dire Wolf in Popular Culture

• Dire Wolf in the MMORPG Runescape,
• Summon Dire Wolf spell in the computer game Diablo 2,
• A Spell and a few creatures in the MMORPG World of Warcraft.

These links are wiki type links because that is the most available source for me to mention here, obviously hard copy game guides would be better citations, but at the moment I wanted to point out that this is definatly a section that could easily be added to this article for completeness sake. Cheers Keetanii (talk) 12:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The "Popular Culture" section should not be a collection of trivial cameos; it should be a discussion of how the public looks at the subject, or non-trivial roles the subject has played in various works of fiction, i.e., as a protagonist or major antagonist, not as cannon-fodder or summonable accessory.--Mr Fink (talk) 13:26, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

In that case, the dire wolves of Game of Thrones might be included, seeing as each of them has a name and plays a role in the storyline. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.134.46.140 (talk) 14:08, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Invalid reference

The first reference seems to direct to an article about the Kenton Joel Carnegie wolf attack and not anything about the evolution of the animal in question. Can someone confirm this? 134.219.176.130 (talk) 15:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Believe it was this addition by Dark hyena. Not sure why this is still in there. 134.219.176.130 (talk) 15:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)