User talk:HCA

wogasch

Hi Mokele, they would tell me (schmidt.wg@soestcom.biz)your email address? I have questions about the Skellt of Ceratophrys. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.187.96.181 (talk) 08:38, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Snakeskull

Hi. Did you release [[Image:Snake skull joints lateral view.jpg]] into the public domain? -Frazzydee 23:56, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's of a specimen in my personal collection. MokeleMokele

I've made a few improvements with the arrows, and making the letters slightly more visible. If you want, I can upload it to a picture loading site for you to see first, or I can just upload it straight to wikipedia, and if it's not as good you can always revert (right?). Thanks. -Frazzydee 01:19, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Go right ahead and upload it, and thanks muchly

Image:Sidewindingtracks.gif

... is superb. Nice work. If you want to release it under the GNU free documentation license, or in the public domain, could you add {{GFDL}} or {{PD}} to the image text? Thanks -- Chris 73 | Talk 16:15, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

-- Thanks very much, and yes, I would like it released to public domain, but unfortunately if I recompile it with my availible software, it does that black flash at the end. Another user removed that using GIMP, iirc, and would probably be able to add the tags as well without messing it up, if you wish to contact him. But yes, public domain = good.

Image source

You've uploaded some nice images. Are they all your own? Could you please indicate this when you upload the images. Adding either {{GFDL}} or {{PD}} (for public domain or GFDL) to the description, as Chris mentioned above, would be helpful in making sure images are properly licensed. Thanks, Maximus Rex 09:35, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, they are, usually from my travels, pets or preserved specimens. I'll remember to add that in future, I just mis-read what Chris said, and thought he meant adding the text to the image in photoshop somehow. I'll be sure to indicate it in future uploads. User:Mokele

Hi, I want to use your on Wiki:nl, but really hope the Dutch mods don't throw it away because of the copyright warning. B kimmel 16:45, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ectothermic muscles

Hi! :) I have a question about that ecothermic muscle thing if you wouldn't mind jumping over and looking at Talk:SuperCroc. 68.81.231.127 10:32, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image:Bandedkrait.jpg

Hi! Thanks for uploading Image:Bandedkrait.jpg. I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the image and I'll tag it for you. Thanks so much, – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 19:54, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

• Also: Image:Corallushortulanus.GIF
• Also: File:Amphisbaenia 1.JPG ... and any other images you may have uploaded. thanks. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Image copyright problem with Image:Hoazin chick claws BMNH.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Hoazin chick claws BMNH.jpg. However, the image may soon be deleted unless we can determine the copyright holder and copyright status. The Wikimedia Foundation is very careful about the images included in Wikipedia because of copyright law (see Wikipedia's Copyright policy).

The copyright holder is usually the creator, the creator's employer, or the last person who was transferred ownership rights. Copyright information on images is signified using copyright templates. The three basic license types on Wikipedia are open content, public domain, and fair use. Find the appropriate template in Wikipedia:Image copyright tags and place it on the image page like this: {{TemplateName}}.

Please signify the copyright information on any other images you have uploaded or will upload. Remember that images without this important information can be deleted by an administrator. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, or ask them at the Image legality questions page. Thank you. Hunter 15:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Unspecified source for Image:Blueteguspiral.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Blueteguspiral.jpg. I notice the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this file yourself, then there needs to be a justification explaining why we have the right to use it on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you did not create the file yourself, then you need to specify where it was found, i.e., in most cases link to the website where it was taken from, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the file also doesn't have a copyright tag, then one should be added. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{Non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 04:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Nv8200p talk 04:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Sidewinding

Thanks for explaining your reversion of my edit regarding the thermoregulation benefits of sidewinding. Here are 4 refs which all mention that sidewinding aids the snake in keeping it's temp down when moving across hot surfaces. [1][2][3][4] There are many, many more.

If you've got something authoritive which debunks these claims, kindly supply it and also accept my humble apologies. If not, pls undo your reversion. Feel free to word it more succintly if you believe that it somehow detracts from the overall thrust of the article. Thanks. 08:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

None of those references are worthwhile, since none are from peer-reviewed scientific journals. I can find plenty of stuff online claiming that you can tell the age of a rattlesnake from the number of segments in the rattle, but that doesn't make such a legend any less bullshit. I've searched the scientific literature, and found *nothing* offering even a shred of evidence that sidewinding is in any way related to temperature. In fact, snakes sidewind only on slick surfaces, such as sand, mud, or smooth table-tops, regardless of temperature. Furthermore, few sidewinding desert snakes ever encounter warm sand - they're nocturnal. In short, it's nothing but an unsubstantiated claim with no factual basis.

Mokele

Ok, thanks. Secret Squïrrel 02:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Snake scales

Hi Mokele,

Its nice to have a herpetologist look over Snake scales to which I contributed, though not learned in snakes. I have a couple of points. The article was completely referenced. Based on your expert opinion, you deleted some referenced text in the lead. The lead only introduces the rest of the article and serves as a short summary for those who do not want to delve deeper. Could you please provide references and also edit the main text of the article re scale structure and use so that it remains worthy of a Good Article. AshLin 04:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I made several changes, with the following source / rationale. First, scales are not considered a defining characteristic of reptiles, as they are an ancestral trait (a plesiomorphy). Pough's Vertebrate Zoology text has a good first chapter of the use of apomorphies vs plesiomorphies in classification, explaining why we don't use the latter). The use of scales to capture food in Acrochordus is documented extensively, but the first ref I found was Lillywhite 1996, journal of zoo biology. As for color, snakes born without scales have normal patterns, as noted in Bennett & Licht, 1975, Comparative biochemical physiology. Lissman's 1950 paper on rectilinear locomotion in boas puts to rest the issue of using the ventrals to grip in terrestrial habitats (though it is known that arboreal species do use them thus). Finally, as for friction vs damage protection, I have actually never seen damage protection used as a rationale for snake scales - it's always evaporative water loss and friction reduction. Gray, Gans, and Jayne have all published extensively on snake locomotion, and especially in Gray's 1946 work on grass snakes friction is noted as a major limitation. IIRC, that paper also has frictional coeficients for snake-skin on various surfaces. Mokele 12:42, 20 September 2007 (EST)

Perhaps, you misunderstood. :-) My point was not to challenge your edits or to ask you to prove the references to me. It was only to request you to make your edits in the main article sections properly referenced as per WP:CITE. Since I dont have the resources/references you mentioned, I cant do it on your behalf. May I request you to do the same? Secondly, the 'lead' or the 'intro' has to summarise the article rather than introduce new facts not evident from the rest of the article, so that would need amending once you have modified the main sections of thearticle and referenced them properly. I hope I have made my point clearly this time. In good faith, AshLin 09:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I see more of what you're getting at, but I'm still not totally clear. Do you want me to add little ref tags after the sentences in the text with accompanying links at the bottom? What do I do for material like peer-reviewed articles which may not be available to users who don't have university access to journal archives, just link to the abstract? Should I try to use webpages rather than scientific articles to ameliorate this, in spite of the former's inferiority as a source? Sorry about this, I'm not used to wikipedia style conventions (I'm used to "push the button that says 'insert citation' in Word with EndNote"); my main goal is simply to add information. Also, I plan on expaning the body of the article substantially once I have time, which will be sometime after Tuesday, so that'll take care of the asymmetry between the intro and main. Mokele 12:42, 21 September 2007 (EST)

Reptile and Amphibian Portal

Here's the link: [Amphibians and Reptiles] Just add your name to the list! The snake article was alot worse when I started working on it, I've tried improving it and have almost deleted the whole thing a few times to start it over. I primarily write about the animals I keep now:Ctenosaur and Cyclura iguanas, but I used to keep and breed pythons, Gaboon Vipers, cobras, boas, etc years ago...so I tried to help out. Thanks for your help, by the way...always good to have another pair of eyes!--Mike Searson (talk) 05:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

snake dentition

If you have refs that need formatting, let me know!--Mike Searson (talk) 05:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

confused about sidewinding

On a recent edit[5], the comment states that "Sidewinding is NOT sideways". However, that edit itself didn't actually remove the statement "sidewinding on sand or loose soil, where the snake moves sideways."

Can we agree that while "Most animals move in the direction of their head", sidewinding is an exception? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 16:20, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it isn't an exception. Because of the tremendous amount of lateral flexion in snake bodies as they move, you cannot define the animal's orientation by the orientation of their bodies. However, without exception, the snake's head will *always* be pointed in the direction of movement. Even for such a weird locomotor pattern as sidewinding, the head is oriented in the direction of movement, even though the body is not. Mokele (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we cannot approximate a snake's body by a rigid spear pointing in one clear-cut direction.

I'm looking at the illustration in the sidewinding article, and imagining that sidewinder is moving across the sand to eventually rest in the shade of a rock.

I think we are looking at 2 different parts of that motion, naturally coming to 2 different conclusions.

While the sidewinder is moving, are both the following statements true?

* Looking at just the head, the nose of the head of the snake is pointed towards the rock, just like "Most animals move in the direction their head is pointing". (Does the illustration in the sidewinding article need to be fixed?)

* Looking at the center of a circle circumscribed around the entire snake, the center of the head is not towards the rock, but instead more or less 90 degrees away from the rock, very different from "Most animals move their bodies in the direction of the center of their head".

--68.0.124.33 (talk) 03:57, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The former is true, but not the latter. The snake's head is always pointed in the direction of overall movement, in sidewinding and all other modes of locomotion. Mokele (talk) 03:08, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Python regius photo for wikispecies

Hello Mokele

The website called Wikispecies currently does not have a viewable photo on the ball python page (Python regius). As your photo of the ball python is on the Wikimedia commons and wikispecies uses the photos for their species represented. As of now, the photo of your ball python can only viewed as a link. could u allow permit the picture to viewable on the wikispecies page for Python regius. I think it would be a good move and would help wikispecies could use a good picture of a python regius.

(Rory)

python regius wikispecies 2

The photo is now in the box format, it is now just not viewable as a whole. All that appears now is the name of the file. do u know how to fix that?

Rory —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.190.153.51 (talk) 01:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to use the photo, but I don't know anything about fixing stuff - all I do is contribute content; I've never learned the markup stuff.

tool

Oh, and how do you find out how many visitors a page has had? I'm more of a content person, so I'm not very well versed in a lot of wiki tools and suchlike. Mokele (talk) 20:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I shouldn't have mentioned that. It is a tool from an external site that I fear people may misuse in keep or delete discussions. It was not the basis of my objection, but indicated that a look through the edit history was warranted. It can also be distracting; as another content person I am doing you a favour by not linking it. I replied at the article talk, pardon my delay in responding. cygnis insignis 08:15, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Spilotespullatus.jpg

Image Copyright problem

Hi Mokele!
We thank you for uploading Image:Spilotespullatus.jpg, but there is a problem. Your image is currently missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. Unless you can help by adding a copyright tag, it may be deleted by an Administrator. If you know this information, then we urge you to add a copyright tag to the image description page. We apologize for this, but all images must confirm to policy on Wikipedia.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks so much for your cooperation.
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--John Bot III (talk) 01:59, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

V. salvadori

Take it to the talk page, my friend...there is no reason why we cannot reach consensus without fighting amongst ourselves. Stop deleting Sprackland, though, you kill other refs that link from it.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 22:27, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Legless lizard

Hi. Whilst categorising this article, I found Category:Legless lizards. Should the description of this category be modified slightly so that instead of specifically stating it's about "taxa in the Pygopodidae family", it says something more general, and uses the Legless lizard article as the main subject ? Or would you rather leave it as is ? CultureDrone (talk) 13:28, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

It should *definitely* not say "taxa in the Pygopodidae", because it includes the Sheltopusik, which is in Anguidae. IMHO, what might be best would be to describe it as "This category contains articles on genera and families of legless lizards", list *all* legless and reduced-limb lizard genera, and modify the legless lizard article so that the family list at the end is replaced with a link to this category page. Would it be possible to format the category page by family, so that it says and links to Anguidae, then lists the legless anguids, then has another big heading/link to Pygopodidae, then a list of those genera, then Dibamidae, etc.? I don't know the first thing about formatting and rules and such, so I don't know if that's possible. Maybe with a note by each family saying "A few / Some / All members of the family have reduced / no external limbs" as appropriate? Thanks for the heads up on the existence of such a category. Mokele (talk) 14:58, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

It's certainly easy enough to have the 'top level' category Category:Legless lizards, and then the various families as sub-categories. However, there's a general rule that categories should ideally have more than one or two entries, and I don't know if breaking it up this way would mean you'd end up with lots of categories with only a couple of entries in each which, while probably taxanomically accurate, wouldn't necessarily be as useful as showing all the legless lizards on the same page. Perhaps the best thing (for the moment) would be just to change the description on the top level category to a more general description, and then go through any relevant non-Pygopodidae articles, adding them to this category - once that had been done, you'd have an idea as to whether it was worth breaking it up further. CultureDrone (talk) 15:19, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Image:Shieldnosecobra.jpg licensing problem

Hi Mokele,

At Image:Shieldnosecobra.jpg, it seems the public domain tag you used is now deprecated. You probably want to change it to PD-self. There are more at Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags/Public_domain. Cheers, eug (talk) 09:31, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Corn snake expertise

I've kept them for years, watched them and experimented with feeding them for years, and also have books on them. I take it that you're even more of an expert than I on this animal? Tell me. SBHarris 05:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, yes, I'm a herpetologist and have worked with this species extensively. However, more to the point, there is actually a deliberate effort to prevent the 'captive care' aspect of many reptile pages from overwhelming the rest of the text. Links to care sheets and such are fine in the 'external links' section, but too much captive care info in the page itself clutters things up. Mokele (talk) 14:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Then spin it off. The policy is a fine one for species which are not common pets, but it's a bit silly in a species which has been extensively bred in captivity for so long that even its behavior has probably been affected. Corn snakes are now so docile that they remind me of lab mice vs. wild Mus musculus. I've been bitten by small captively bred pythons unused to being handled, for example, but I cannot imagine being bitten by a captively bred corn snake, handling-experienced or not.

In any case, the question of having the issue of "captive care" overwhelm the rest of the text on articles is strictly one of encyclopedia management to reflect the real world. If the captive care section gets too long, the proper response is to summarize and spin off, as per WP:SS. That's how WP naturally grows. See the article on Dog, for example-- do you think it would have been well-served if every time somebody tried to add information on captive care of dogs, somebody else deleted it, for fear it would overwhelm the main article as "clutter"?

Finally, there's the problem of not just deleting information, but changing it. Corn snakes do NOT require dry food as the article now says; they eat wet thawed animals even more readily (and quickly) than dry ones. SBHarris 19:55, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, the issue of spinning off isn't so simple - do we just spin off the corn snakes, or do we have a generalized 'snake care' spinoff, with special sections (my preference)? That's been discussed in the talk page, as I see you've noticed, but the discussion seems to have petered out. Maybe it should be raised on the talk page of the general Reptiles and Amphibians wikiproject? I'd be more than happy to contribute to a generalize captive care article. Secondly, you're incorrect about natural docility with regards to domestication. One of the corn snakes used in my last experiments was acquired when only a few weeks only and handled quite infrequently, and as a result, was just as nasty as any of the wild rat snakes I've caught. It was actually so nasty it was dumped from the experiment, and even the much nicer corns would still bite if pestered enough. In contrast, a boa I caught in Peru was pretty much dog-tame, and I've dealt with many other snakes, venomous and non, which were very docile. Coral snakes are exceptional docile, as are banded kraits. Docility clearly isn't a good metric of domestication in snakes. Finally, wet vs. dry is so utterly insignificant as not to be worth mentioning. I'm not aware of any widespread preconception or claim that dryness/wetness has any effect. A statement of lack of effect only has worthwhile information *if* it refutes a commonly-held preconception, otherwise it's like saying "snakes don't care if the handler's shirt is green or red" - since such statements neither contain information nor refute preconceptions, there is zero information content. In contrast, "snakes do not refuse pre-killed mice" would be valid and useful, because it refutes a commonly-held belief that snakes need live prey. Mokele (talk) 21:04, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Colubrid

My brain was probably only half turned on when I made this proposal. The redirect in question has a history, so our page cannot be moved over it without an admin's help. Know any friendly ones who might be willing to help out? Otherwise, we could just turn the redirect into an article and ask for the one to be merged into the other at a point much further down

Sorry, no clue about any admins, but I say go ahead and do it for consistency's sake. Mokele (talk) 14:36, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

The admins I know may be tiring of these kind of requests from me; they'll probably point me to the requested moves page where it will likely get rejected. Perhaps the best solution for the time being is simply to start editing the Colubridae page. It will likely never be seen as more than a minor infringement anyway, since it has never been a very popular or high-quality page.

Creating content for the new page will mean that we will have to tackle a problem: the ITIS taxonomy in general is the more authoritative, but for this family it is still woefully incomplete. The TIGR Reptile Database is (much more) complete in this respect (1,938 species), but is not nearly as authoritative. For example, if we use only TIGR for the Colubridae, then we would have to accept Pantherophis for American rat snake, even though the leading experts in the field rejected this classification in 2003 in favor of keeping Elaphe, the year after Pantherophis was suggested. Yuk! On the other hand, we could use both taxonomies to a certain extent, but then we would have to make decisions ourselves about which taxonomies to follow when and for what. Yuk! Then again, there may be no escaping such a decision, since we still have no idea when Dr. McDiarmid will finish his historic snake species checklist (where ITIS gets its snake info) and we can't go on ignoring our entire collection of Colubridae articles forever. --Jwinius (talk) 15:09, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy Mokele's Day!

Mokele has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Mokele's day! For your expertise in herpetological articles, enjoy being the Star of the day, Mokele! Cheers, bibliomaniac15 01:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Mokele (talk) 17:02, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I read some of what was discussed about you on Wikiquette Alerts, and I was impressed. Thought all ambitious wikipedians had the WikiManner. It's hard to resist being an elitist sometimes, when discussing something close to your heart.Revan ltrl (talk) 16:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Venue

Mokele: At what venue do you ply your trade in herpetology and functional morphology? William R. Buckley (talk) 19:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm at Brown University, in the 'morph group'. Most universities don't even have a functional morphologist, and those that do usually only have one or two, but Brown decided to go all in and has five of the top minds, all in one place. Plus I get to play with X-rays. Mokele (talk) 19:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Vivisection article

Way to go! Latest version just fine. Thanks. Bob98133 (talk) 16:31, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! At some vague point in the future, I'm going to seriously improve the animal testing stuff related to actual legislative / administrative oversight, because there's surprisingly little on most pages, and it gives the impression of low levels of regulation, when the opposite is true - biannual inspections, surprise visits from any of half a dozen agencies, and fines running into the range of $10k *per day* for even minor violations. Of course, that'll have to go after my already immense list of planned improvements related to my academic focus, organismal biomechanics and functional morphology. Mokele (talk) 16:46, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Gait graphs.jpg

While I like the idea of your chart and find it a useful addition to the Gait article, I've got a few minor quibbles. --Vrmlguy (talk) 11:15, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

• What is the source of the data you used to produce the charts? While the charts look reasonable, attribution would be nice.
• Who is Hilderbrand? You say that they are "the standard for biomechanics", but Wikipedia doesn't seem to know any scientists by that name, and googling for Hilderbrand biomechanics doesn't seem to find anything.
• The chart for 'Lateral Sequence Walk' shows the left legs behaving differently from the right. Specifically, while all four feet are on the ground about two-thirds of the time, the offset between the left front and hind feet is different from the offset between the right front and hind feet. Also, the chart for 'Lateral Sequence Walk' is also offset a few pixels to the left of the other two charts in that column.

1)There's no actual data - I merely replicated the general patterns. The concept of the gait graph is an invention by Hilderbrand, used by just about everyone else ever since, hence why I put in the file description and the caption "in the style of Hildebrand".

2)Hildebrand is the first reference at the bottom of the page, and basically the inventor of modern gait analysis. I think he retired a good 20 years ago, so most of his work is either in books or too old to be freely available online, but there's a link in the references. Most of the "big names" in biomechanics aren't famous by any stretch of the imagination, and AFAIK none have WP articles. The whole field is pretty new and small.

3)The foot sequence is correct, and while the phase relationship may be off a tiny bit, that's also more realistic - there's a lot of 'slop' in real gaits, and most gait graphs from actual data have error bars ~10% of the gait cycle long at the end of each bar. The offset is pretty insignificant. Go ahead and fix it if you want, but the rest of the biomechanics articles are in such a horrid state of neglect, it's hard to justify spending time on an offset rather than making substantial improvements to other articles. Mokele (talk) 15:17, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. I suspected that this might be the case, just wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. I was sorta, kinda, thinking about converting the charts to SVG, which would allow the direct use of any underlying numbers, but if they don't exist then they don't exist. BTW, have you read this? --Vrmlguy (talk) 20:43, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

No worries. And no, I'm not familiar with that book, as it seems more human-oriented. I'm more on the comparative biomechanics side, and our classic book is this. There's a growing movement to integrate the two, but it's rather hard - the human folks tend to be very application-oriented and focused on resolving tiny differences, while the animal folks like myself are more into big-picture questions which have almost no immediate application. Mokele (talk) 21:00, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The book as a whole is human-oriented, but chapter five is very wide ranging, contrasting mammalian vs reptilian quadrupeds, comparing bipedal walking to brachiation in gibbons, how to predict gait transitions in both bipeds and quadrupeds, walking strategies on the Moon and Mars, and the gait of robots whose legs are pogo sticks. I found the whole chapter fascinating, and about 15% of it was useful to me. I'm trying to produce a computer animation of a horse and I want to automate the movement process as much as possible. I've got a really good program that handles humans, and a really crappy program that handles insects, but nothing for quadrupeds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vrmlguy (talk • contribs) 04:36, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

What I'd suggest is a procedure called forward dynamics, where you use known movements to drive a simulation, which in turn means you need data on movements. I'd suggest using Google Scholar and looking up 'horse' along with words like 'kinematics', 'joint angle', 'inverse dynamics', 'joint torque', 'EMA', and 'segment mass'. These should lead you to various papers which have graphs of joint angle changes over time for all the relevant joints, as well as possibly segments for body mass. Add some spring properties to each leg (the distal legs of most ungulates are mostly elastic tendons with little to no muscle), and you should get a pretty reasonable approximation. True automation, however, would require simulating all the muscles and their properties, which simply isn't feasible. A few research groups have done it for simple movements of a single limb, and it required them to buy substantial supercomputer time due to all the complex properties of muscle (and still didn't come out very good). One big suggestion I will make, though, which will put you light-years ahead of most animated horses - the pivot-point of the forelimb isn't the proximal end of the humerus, it's on the scapula, inside the body. If you watch a video of a horse closely, you'll notice the shoulder joint actually seems to move back and forth, and that's real - there's no sternum or clavicle, and the scapula is simply suspended in a sling of several muscles, allowing it to rotate with the limb and increase stride length. Oh, also, while it's impossible to keep the head still in a gallop, try to keep it reasonably so in most other gaits (see articles of gaze stabilization) - most animals have an automatic reflex to adjust their head to keep the eyes steady relative to the world. Hope this all helps! Mokele (talk) 05:13, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers. I'm still at the stick-figure stage, so I don't know how much I'll eventually be able to incorporate, but you've given me lots of data to work with. Thanks again! --70.130.244.4 (talk) 12:11, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Biomechanics

Hi, Mokele, thanks for the invitation. Unfortunately my User:Philcha/Sandbox#To_do to-do list is quite long - the important part for now is invertebrate zoology, about which which I need to learn more in order to do a good job on the Cambrian explosion. However please let me know when you set up a project / task force page and I'll watch it to see if there are places where I can help without taking too much time off my zoology / Cambrian explosion agenda.

BTW there are other things you might consider, for example the water flow systems are 50% of understanding sponges, and there's been a lot written about biomechanics of dinosaurs. Best wishes, --Philcha (talk) 14:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

No worries, tackling the Cambrian explosion is a pretty big job. I'll definitely add filter feeding to my list, sponges included, and dinosaur locomotion too (I actually just read that Sellers simulation paper with the 40mph compsognathus). If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you indicate your support on the WP project proposal page (linked to on your talk page), just to help get this thing off the ground? Cheers, Mokele (talk) 16:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Philcha (talk) 16:29, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Mokele (talk) 16:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the small number of "support" votes, you might consider setting up Biomechanics as a Task Force within an existing project, possibly Animals. The Cambrian Explosion Taskforce is active and quite potent - size really isn't everything, a few good and enthusiastic editors can achieve more than the average Wikiproject. The Cambrian Explosion Taskforce even has its own Template:Cambrian explosion calling card. --Philcha (talk) 22:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not really sure what difference it makes. I've received a stunning zero support from the wikiprojects I've mentioned this at, which sort of negates the task force's advantage in having the parent project do a lot of the basic work. I'm waffling about creating it at all. On one hand, I don't want to clutter things up with a project with barely any participants. On the other, I wonder (optimistically) if having a 'home base' and article tags might garner some interest, so it's not just me editing these articles on my lonesome. Mokele (talk) 02:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I understand your frustration. When I started doing articles on higher-level invertebrate taxa, I asked for comment at the reelvant projects and got zilch. I suspect they didn't want to get invilved in articles that involved so much research per 100 words, and were more interested in descriptive artciles on their personal favourite critters. --Philcha (talk) 18:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I managed to eek out enough support to create WikiProject_Organismal_Biomechanics, thanks in part to you. Hopefully our paths will cross, possibly over the locomotion of Anomalacaris. Mokele (talk) 04:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Although I won't be participating, I'm glad to hear the project is started! Here's an interesting one that might be able to use some rewordingin the biomechanics portion: Histiophryne psychedelica. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Rollback

I noticed you didn't have rollback rights, so I have enabled rollback on your account. Rollback is a fast method of reverting obviously vandalistic edits. Keep in mind these things when going to use rollback:

• Rollback can be used to revert clear cases of vandalism only, and not good faith edits.
• Rollback may be removed at any time.

If you no longer want rollback, then contact me and I'll remove it. Also, for some information on how to use rollback, you can view this page, and this page. I'm sure you'll do great with rollback, just leave me a message if you need any help. Happy editing! Malinaccier (talk) 01:09, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! This'll be most useful! Mokele (talk) 01:29, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

WP Organismal Biomechanics

Hi Mokele: No problem! Happy to help... I found your new project through the banner added to Bird flight, and followed it through to see what it was about. Good luck with it! MeegsC | Talk 16:41, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

WP Organismal Biomechanics

I've expanded the category system for the project somewhat, but that's about the extent of my interest at this time. One thing you might consider would be renaming the categories you created to match the standard naming scheme. For instance, the links generated by the {{Cat class}} template are red because it expects Category:FA-Class Organismal Biomechanics articles instead of Category:FA-Class Organismal Biomechanics as so on. You'd need to adjust the project template accordingly, of course. Just a suggestion. Cheers, --Stepheng3 (talk) 19:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Mokele (talk) 00:40, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Python

Thanks. Green Squares (talk) 14:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi, is the following link about the 10-year child that was eaten by the Python? If so, maybe we should add the link!?

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/animals/why_snakes_are_feared.htm

Green Squares (talk) 14:04, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

RE: Reptile Classification

Yes, indeed there is no final place for any group in the taxonomy of life. They seem to change depending upon which source you use. I tried to make some sense of where the serpents fit based on various sources. Basically I wanted to fill in the "group" Scleroglossa, which did not have a page in Wikipedia. There's one now but is is a stub for now. Perhaps an expert in the area will fill it in better.

Cheers (DGER | talk} —Preceding undated comment added 21:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC).

Sure when I get some spare time I will look at some of the human oriented biomechanics topics. I only work on human motion analysis but there are many areas that overlap with animal biomechanics.

Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dger (talk • contribs) 02:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Contradition in Black Caiman

Please do explain this. I did not mention anything about the average size, which in the article is indicated as being 3 to 4.26 ("Most adult black caimans are 3 to 4.26 meters"). What I did refer to is the clear contradiction on 5 m, it first saying "The black caiman can grow to 5 m".... and then "old males rarely growing larger than 5 meters". Either it grows to 5 m (as indicated by first), or it rarely grows larger (as indicated by second). Both cannot be correct. Cheers, 212.10.89.109 (talk) 04:27, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not actually a contradiction. I interpret it at saying that they can reach 5 meters, and every so often one may top it by a few centimeters, but not enough to warrant upgrading the max to 5.1. Mokele (talk) 21:22, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer, though I do not agree entirely. I might change the wording at some point so it reflects what you indicated more clearly. Cheers, 212.10.67.135 (talk) 13:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Force Platforms

I don't think you are incorrect about force platforms being able to measure three components of the ground reaction moment of force. The moments that they do measure are internal moments that are then used to compute the centre of pressure and vertical moment of force. (I will include the appropriate equations for this in a later edit. The equations are presented in the reference provided. I was the lead author.) No force platform, that I am aware of, can measure the three components because only the vertical one exists unless the person is able to grip the surface or be glued to or tied to it in some way. Most force platform documentation warns you NOT to do this because it invalidates the software the computes the centres of pressure.

Cheers

Dger (talk) 17:58, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Apparently AMTI makes them (http://amti.biz/ go to 'force platforms > standard') with 6-channel output (one for each linear & moment component). We got one fairly recently (a portable model, for some fieldwork we just did). The other moments could exist, though not really for humans - one of the frog species we work with has wet-adhesion suction disks on all of its toes which can resist substantial force (enough to make it difficult to remove them from slick surfaces if they don't want to be removed). A colleague of mine has been using a similar system, synched with video, to get at torques in arboreal locomotion with species of possum which grip the perch (and I'd love to do similar tests with snakes). However, for most of the species we work with, the moments are used as you suggest, to determine CoP. Mokele (talk) 18:48, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Premaxilla

I wish you'd reconsider your decision. Incisive bone covers the topic better, and since they both cover the same subject, I don't really see the need for two separate articles. If anything, please merge one of them into the other. Matt (talk) 17:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, Premaxilla should remain, and incisive bone should be subsumed in it, but I've not bothered because I can already forsee the complaints from the human-only folks. Mokele (talk) 23:02, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Cockroaches and Jesus

Hello Mokele!

Thanks for correcting my error, I totally misread that section! My mistake was that I thought it said that cockroaches can run on water too, but in reality it said that they were facultative bipeds too.

Greetings from Amsterdam, Kwiki (talk) 02:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

No worries, it's rather obscure knowledge, and the article isn't laid out very well. It's on my (long) list of full re-writes to do. Mokele (talk) 02:29, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Human vestigiality

I clarified the offending passages on the talk page. Thanks. --Rajah (talk) 14:20, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Reverting "poor edits" to Jumping

You recently reverted my edits to Jumping, giving only the reason "fixing poor edits."

I spent a lot of time and carefully considered all of those edits, and I believe everything I did is well justified (and certainly in good faith). For one thing, the article's organization was clearly in need of repair. One of many examples of this: discussion of "launching" from a "substrate" was given before either of these had been defined. Had this been a graded essay, it would have received "F" for lack of organization! Please note that I did not delete any major sections or key ideas; I merely reorganized them in a meaningful way. Also, there were many poorly worded phrases. Example: "Work divided by time = power". Another example: "the animal will simply move in a give direction until they lose contact".

Would you please take a second look at my edits, in light of the above reasoning, and consider restoring them? If you restore my edits and then still see problems with what I've done, I would welcome your further improvements to the article. On the other hand, if you are still convinced that my edits are all "poor," would you please elaborate so I can avoid making poor edits in the future?

Best Regards, Lambtron (talk) 16:24, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

There were several unwarranted deletions (especially in the 'links' section), and several rephrasings were flat-out wrong (such as rephrasing putting emphasis on the effect of running starts on height, when in reality, height increases less than range). In light of such errors, I simply reverted everything rather than waste time picking through it. Organization and other such frivolities are secondary in comparison to factual accuracy and information content. Mokele (talk) 23:17, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I am a technical writer and, as such, I have low tolerance for both grammatical and organizational problems. So, although I respect your low opinion of the value of organization, I plan to try again to fix the numerous problems in the article. As you can imagine, though, it's quite discouraging to put substantial thought and effort into enhancing an article, only to have my work completely undone by someone who has neither the time nor patience to properly review it. To avoid having this happen again, can we work together in a more fair and friendly way to institute the requisite changes? Specifically:

1. You feel that various links should not have been deleted. I can justify each of those deletions per WP:EL and, if you wish me to, I will explain my reasoning for each deletion. If you believe that any of the deleted links do not violate the letter or spirit of WP:EL, please name them and explain your thinking and I will leave them untouched.

2. You state that various rephrasings were incorrect, but the only example you give seems to contradict the facts previously set forth in the article. As I understand it (based both on what the article says and several years of college physics), a running start makes it possible for a jumper to jump farther, or higher, or both, depending on what percentage of horizontal momentum is converted to vertical momentum. In any case, we can easily resolve this by changing the sentence to read "jumpers are able to jump higher, farther, or both when starting from a run." Since I have no idea what other discrepencies you have noted, would you please list them? I can then propose to you alternative phrasing so that we can come to agreement before editing the article.

I don't mean to make things difficult for you, but we really do need to find common ground here. After all, our shared objective is to improve WP for the benefit of all, right? Frankly, I think it would be simpler to just restore my edits and work from there, but if you feel it would be more productive, I am amenable to discussing all of the issues in detail before editing the article. What do you think?

Lambtron (talk) 02:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I've restored your edits for such trivialities as various WP policies, and edited the text extensively to correct errors and ambiguities. Mokele (talk) 03:38, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Mokele—you are an honorable Wikipedian! Lambtron (talk) 05:30, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Frog skeletons

Regarding your comment about the need for frog skeleton images for Jumping, would either of these be useful? Lambtron (talk) 23:04, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I actually have three mounted skeletons of my own, so I was planning on taking a photo of one of them, and then actually labeling the bones and joints, color coded by what's mobile in non-jumpers and what's new in frogs. Unfortunately, I'm a bit buried in work atm. Can you remind me in ~ 1 week or so? Mokele (talk) 02:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Reminder! Lambtron (talk) 23:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Got it! Thanks! Mokele (talk) 00:52, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Valid WP topics?

Mokele, when you have the time would you please review Kinaesthetics and Skinner Releasing Technique? I suspect that both of these articles constitute either independent research, commercial advertisement, or both, but your extensive knowledge of related topics may put you in a better position to assess them. Thanks, Lambtron (talk) 02:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Both seem a bit crackpot-ish to me, but my expertise is really more along the lines of animal locomotion, sorry. Mokele (talk) 01:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Muscle embryology

Is the information you added also true for insects, molluscs, and echinoderms, or just for vertebrates? --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:14, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not actually sure (I'm almost exclusively a vertebrate person, and I don't even know that much about embryology), but from what little I do know, I suspect it's vertebrate-only. Overall, the whole article is pretty biased, either towards humans specifically or general vertebrates, which I keep meaning to fix, so if you know anything you can add, it'd be much appreciated. Mokele (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I would shift the bias, and plan to do so, but more from a kinesiology viewpoint. My own specialty is botany, which is one reason I haven't yet done so. I'll keep you in mind, though as someone who might be able to help should I overcome my impetus and actually work on the article. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:17, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Definitely - I'm rather swamped with my teaching duties at the moment, but soon I'll have time again. Mokele (talk) 22:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

References

Do you know about this tool? Just enter a PubMed ID number or an ISBN and it spts out a formatted reference. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:34, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

That's *exactly* the sort of tool I'd been hoping someone would create! Thanks! Mokele (talk) 19:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Anatomy

Regarding this edit. I reverted you, assuming that your edit was a mistake since it was an inappropriate use of rollback and you appeared to be patrolling for vandalism. If I was mistaken, I'm willing to review the links one by one with you. ThemFromSpace 00:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

My bad, though I did find two links in there that might be useful, so I've re-added them. Mokele (talk) 03:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Animals

Are you still and Active participant of WikiProject Animals WP:ANIMALS ? Please let me know. ZooPro 05:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep. Mokele (talk) 13:43, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on pages like animal testing

I'm just stopping by to express my appreciation for the helpful edits you've been making recently at animal research-related pages. I've been frustrated for some time with the anti-research POV of some editors, and I appreciate seeing your thoughtful work. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Edits by Anonymous user

IP address (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been making destructive, original rsearch type edits to several of the venomous snake artcles. Black mamba and the King cobra articles have been his main targets. He has consistently taken out referenced material and added his own nonsense, and it is driving me insane. He has been warned by others, and I just reported him. For example, look at this in the King cobra article:

The mortality rate from a bite can be as high as 75%. People who are bitten by this species have a low chance to survive

But the sources attached to that sentence claim that a majority of bites are actually non-lethal. Then there is this:

The King Cobra's venom, which is composed mostly of proteins and polypeptides, is produced in specialized salivary glands (as is the case with all venomous reptiles) just behind the animal's eyes. When biting its prey, venom is forced through the snake's half-inch (1.25 cm) fangs and into the wound. In the past,King cobra was treated as 1.7 mg/kg in LD/50 value (which is one of the least toxic elapids.) However, this is not always true. According to the recent toxinology study, the LD/50 of Chinese King cobra is 0.34 mg/kg-0.46 mg/kg which means it is more poisonous than most of the other cobra species, like chinese cobra[1]. Although this toxicity is still weaker than some of the other elapids(like taipan, krait,etc), King cobras can deliver larger quantities of venom than most other species. It injects 380-600 mg of venom(which is enough to kill 20-42 adults) in a single bite, and can even kill an elephant within 3 hours. One bite from king cobra to human can cause death within 15 minutes.

None of the references back up anything claimed here, look at it yourself. No such LD50 as 0.34-0.46 mg/kg and nothing about a bite killing 20-42 people (42?, lol). Then there is this elephant myth.

I don't know what to do anymore! This guy is an absolute moron. Veronica 07:37, 7 Novermber 2009 (UTC)

The elephant thing is true!!! Stop editing back the mice part on the snakebite page moloke... You know nothing about snake bites.

Oh and here are the elephant dieing from king cobra accounts

http://wildlife1.wildlifeinformation.org/S/00dis/toxic/biotoxin/Snake_Bite_Ele.html

And here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-400818/Elephants-broken-hearts.html

And here

http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2010/04/silhouetted-in-the-andaman-sea-an-elephant-takes-a-morning-dip-in-the-warm-waters-photo-cesare-naldirajan-a-60-year.html

So many accounts of snakebites killing elephants —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.78.238.24 (talk) 20:15, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles needs you!

Ahoy there! We're conducting our annual purge of the participants list for WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles, in an effort to make sure our members stay current with events at the WikiProject. If you would like to renew your participation with the WikiProject, simply drop by the participants list and re-add your name to the list in alphabetical order using the following format: {{user|YOUR USERNAME HERE}}. Also feel free to add your specialties or points of interest. If you don't have the time or don't feel like rejoining, then ignore this request; you can rejoin at any time you'd like. Cheers, bibliomaniac15 00:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

frog

i am sorry bothereing you but are you knowing answer to my question [2] on this page: Talk:Frog?70.153.208.164 (talk) 01:04, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Rollback on Human vestigiality

I'm not sure why you rolled back this edit. It was unsourced and may have been wrong, but it for sure wasn't vandalism. Auntie E. 17:30, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Laziness - rollback is easier than "undo". Mokele (talk) 17:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

You might try Twinkle, as it has options for neutral or good faith edit reversions with summaries. And it's much easier than "undo". Rollback should only be used for obvious vandalism; everything else should have a summary of why the edit doesn't work. Auntie E. 18:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Oooo, thanks, that's a lot more useful! Mokele (talk) 18:15, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

No problem, glad I could help. :) Auntie E. 18:49, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Salamander & JK Rowling

Hi. I don't think that this edit was vandalism - JKR does talk about salamanders jumping in and out of fire (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, if I'm not mistaken). It's an important reference; you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) how many people really think that salamanders actually can do that. Arikk (talk) 05:43, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

AAH consensus

Hi,

If you are in agreement with the recent discussion here, I think we have consensus and can remove the page protection. The thumbnail sketch is the information about sebaceous glands and swimming and EL to Jim Moore's site remain, but the Moore's site will not be used as a reference for these points. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 18:27, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me - I've put in versions of swimming & sebaceous in the talk page that include the non-Moore references (Vogel & Langdon, respectively). Mokele (talk) 02:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Hola, note and note. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 19:31, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Hand walking animals

Hi Mokele,

I have a few concerns about recent additions to hand walking:

• Do skunks really have hands and, if so, do they actually walk on their front hands or just stand on them when facing threats?
• The youtube link purports to show a handwalking dog, but the video appears to be obviously "doctored" to make the dog appear as though it is walking on front paws (hands?), not to mention that the video is not exactly of scientific documentary quality. Is this a satisfactory supporting reference for the claim that dogs can walk on their front hands?
• Even if both of the above concerns are unfounded, is it possible that discussions about animals exhibiting unusual walking behavior might be better located in articles about the animals themselves? I only mention this because I expect most people who view the article do so because they are only thinking of, and interested in, hand-walking humans.

Lambtron (talk) 22:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, "hand" is a bit anthropomorphic, but skunks really do "handstands" to aim while spraying, and have some limited mobility in this position (mostly used in aiming). The dog video, while not exactly the best source, isn't actually doctored - I've seen other dogs of similar small breeds trained to do this (coversely, I've also seen adult goannas trained to walk bipedaly). I do agree that these tid-bits are rather "trivia-ish", but at the same time, the whole page is dedicated to an extremely un-natural, almost-never-used locomotor behavior. Mokele (talk) 02:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed

I want your answer, it is done. Do not change it now if it is not to your liking I will keep changing it until it is. Just tell me what to work on now. --Schmeater (talk) 23:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Quick Question

Is the information in this link correct http://www.sambhota.org/Tenzin%20Geyden/Lit_Review-Atif.pdf.

Reddevil1421 (talk) 02:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC) It's...Well, it's not a good source. There's scraps of facts in there, but cobbled together in a very bad way that makes it clear the author doesn't really understand the subject. For instance, classification of elapidae is based on traits like proteroglyphous fangs, not just venom toxicity. It's like watching someone who doesn't understand the slightest thing about how a car works trying to explain what a carburetor is. Mokele (talk) 03:17, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Haha. I understand completely, the source is written atrociously, not neccesarily the prose but its form and the way the information is presented. The amount of references made me think it had some merit. I am attempting to take this to FA and I am extremely cautious about using the references that are listed on the discussion page. Are there any "scholarly' sources that can be found about the black mamba? Reddevil1421 (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

File source problem with File:Wart snake 1.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:Wart snake 1.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of that website's terms of use of its content. However, if the copyright holder is a party unaffiliated from the website's publisher, that copyright should also be acknowledged.

If you have uploaded other files, consider verifying that you have specified sources for those files as well. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged per Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion, F4. If the image is copyrighted and non-free, the image will be deleted 48 hours after 23:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC) per speedy deletion criterion F7. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 23:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Editing Oarfish

Hey, I have a decent source which you confirmed for editing the Oarfish information page, but I don't know how to cite references. I mean I can cite a book reference, but I do not know how to cite it on wikipedia, or annotate it in the text. I decided to post here rather than the social board.

Also, I am new to editing on wikipedia, but I am very affluent with Biology so please escuse my shortcomings in the technological sense.

--ParadisoSkyline (talk) 07:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Collaboration for your alma mater

Brown University has been a recurring candidate for the Universities Collaboration of the Month but it has been short the votes necessary to win on several occasions. If you'd like to see a concerted effort to improve the article on your alma mater, please drop by the collaboration page to cast your vote. Also feel free to help improve our current collaborations during their last few days. Cheers! -Mabeenot (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article review/Frog/archive1

I see you recently made some improvements to the frog article. It is currently under featured article review and will likely lose its FA status if further improvements are not made. Please comment on the FAR page if you intend to help improve the article back to FA standard. I'd be interested in helping if so. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 23:48, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Classification of animal taxa

Hello! You seem knowlegeable about the subject of zoology. I am also working animal related articles of Wikipedia. I have had some debate with some other editors (administrator?) about using subfamilies. It seems that some have taken it upon themselves to delete information on subfamilies which are useful to readers. Have you had any frustrations with this? I checked the Wikipedia Taxon page ( Wikipedia:Taxobox_usage ) and found this: "Taxoboxes should include all major ranks above the taxon described in the article, PLUS minor ranks that are important to understanding the classification of the taxon described in the article, or which are discussed in the article. Other minor ranks should be omitted." Was some council of the scholars held deciding more? What are your thoughts on this?

Bruinfan12 (talk) 03:05, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm mixed. Subfamilies can be really informative (as in Colubridae), or effectively useless (especially for taxa with little to no diversity, like echidnas). While I don't think any taxa is more "formal" than any other, I've noticed subfamilies tend to get shuffled around a lot or replaced as phylogenies change, which makes keeping up with them a pain. I'd suggest that they only be included in taxa like Colubridae which contain substantial taxonomic and morphological diversity not reflected at the genus level (due to too many genera), or where subfamily corresponds to some widely-known common names like in Accipitridae. Mokele (talk) 13:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

The Fauna Barnstar

		The Fauna Barnstar
		For your excellent work on Herpetology-related articles. The High Fin Sperm Whale 20:15, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks!

Still interested in editing muscle page?

Hi Mokele: It seems like I'm a latecomer to the muscle pages here and everyone else seems to have left. I put a few thoughts on the muscle discussion and started a draft for the motor unit page. Any interest in working together? Know of anyone else who may be? QuietJohn (talk) 19:28, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I was just about to contact you - I've been meaning to take a stab at it for a while, but between fixing the pages that are even worse (go look at what tonic_(physiology) said before I got to it) and general business, I haven't gotten time to start, or to look over your suggestions. I do think a major overhaul would be good, possibly including separating some issues (muscular anatomy) and incorporating others (muscle contraction). Fiber types is a whole rat's nest - I'm dealing with those issues for a current research project, made all the worse by various in myosins *within* a single fiber along its length, dubious value of skinned-fiber preps for some of these metrics, etc. Of course, I'm also biased - I come from a whole-organism, skeletal-muscle-oriented perspective.

Anyhow, yes, I'm definitely interested in lending a hand with this, but I'm so busy that my contributions will be sporadic at best. I'll try to read over your suggestions and reply this weekend, and please do bug me if I forget, because this stuff really does need to happen. Mokele (talk) 20:27, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Looking forward to your comments. I also added something to motor unit and motor unit recruitment. I'm not the greatest expert on fiber typing, so I'm not sure if it cleaned up or messed up! Interesting to hear that there may be variations of myosins along the length of single fibers. There have been a few theoretical muscle models suggesting variable strain along single fibers and a couple of recent papers confirming it in human muscles. Wonder if the myosin distribution corresponds to strain distribution?

Pappas GP, Asakawa DS, Delp SL, Zajac FE Drace JE. Nonuniform shortening in the biceps brachii during elbow flexion. J Appl Physiol 92: 2381–2389, 2002

Shin DD, Hodgson JA, Edgerton VR, Sinha S. In vivo intramuscular fascicle-aponeuroses dynamics of the human medial gastrocnemius during plantarflexion and dorsiflexion of the foot. J Appl Physiol. 2009 Oct;107(4):1276-84. QuietJohn (talk) 04:59, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Electrical tuning

Thank you for adding this info to Frog and Reptile articles. Blackash have a chat 04:16, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Digitigrades and ungulates

Hi Mokele,

Seeing as how you got me set straight on the different types of animal locomotion, I am finding the confusion of the two types in another article and was wondering if you could clarify this in some fashion (you can probably do it quicker than I because you know what you are talking about and I am still trying to figure it out!). See Hock (zoology) -- describing horses as digitigrade animals -- can you rephrase that lead a bit, or is there a more general term covering both horses AND dogs that can be used? Thanks! Montanabw^(talk) 18:14, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll give it a stab, sure. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Mokele (talk) 18:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank YOU for your help! Sometimes it's not easy to be an expert on everything from locomotion to taxonomy to palentology, all of which we seem to come across in the horse articles...we value your help! Montanabw^(talk) 22:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

deletion of Alex Pyron

Can you please explain to me why you've nominated this for deletion? He has been a professor, while being a grad/ph.d. student. He is starting a "named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research." According to Wikipedia:Notability (academics), that means that he is notable. Also he is referred to as a major reference on many other Wikipedia articles on snakes, including: Kingsnake, Burmese Python, and Short-tailed Snake. How could an expert on these snakes not be notable? I realize I need to expand on his contributions to the field of science, but as you can see from his partial list of publications, he is well-written. Also, I'm glad I was looking at the page, because you forgot to notify the authors of the page. -- RandorXeus. 23:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Also, even if he is not notable as an academic, why couldn't he be notable as a scientist? He has tons of research and credentials. -- RandorXeus. 00:00, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

it just seems awfully early in his career, especially since he hasn't actually assumed the faculty position yet. He has a lot of papers, but his field does have a high output of numerous, short articles. What about citation metrics (how often has each paper been cited, etc.)? It just seems premature to give a page to a post-doc who hasn't begun a faculty position when so many tenured faculty at top institutions lack pages. Mokele (talk) 00:10, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I get what you are saying about lacking pages, but just because he is early in his career doesn't mean he isn't notable. Also the fact that he'll be 22/23 with a named chair position shows that he must know what he is talking about. Would you be willing to give me some more time to further prove his notability before you nominate it? -- RandorXeus. 00:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Sure. Citation indices such as the H-index would be useful - how many of his papers have been cited 10 times, how many cited 4 times, how many aren't cited, etc. Mokele (talk) 01:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know alot about H-index or anything like that, but I looked on Google Scholars. He's had articles that are cited anywhere from 4 to 12 to 917 times. I feel like that is pretty notable. I'd like to include this information in the article, but I don't really know how to phrase it. Can you assist me please? -- RandorXeus. 23:17, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Nah, actually putting the h-index on the page is superfluous, plus it'll just change too fast. I guess that 917 is pretty impressive, I'll remove the deletion notice. Mokele (talk) 01:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for checking up on me. I've been around Wikipedia for a few years, but I'm still learning. -- RandorXeus. 04:48, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

You might find this interesting, I kept looking down the list on Scholar, and found one of his articles that had been cited 3669 times.

That has to be an error - that's more than the total output of his field in a decade. Come to think of it, the 917 is pretty extreme too, and is probably an error in the google algorithm, possibly taking into account popular news stories. Mokele (talk) 11:27, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I couldn't find any article co-authored by RA Pyron that was cited more than 13 times. What I found when I checked google scholar was an average of just under 4 per article over the 13 articles that I found. Are you sure, RandorXeus, that you're not looking at publications that were cited by Pyron and 916 others? Or perhaps they were authored by some other Pyron? 24.141.39.34 (talk) 18:18, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

User:Sharry99

I saw your report at WP:AIV. I have created Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Sharry99. ‎ If you are confident of the existence of other socks of this editor that are already blocked, you could add them to the category, per instructions at the top of the page. This is handy for record-keeping, and can form part of the evidence in future sock cases. EdJohnston (talk) 14:20, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I actually just did an investigation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Sharry99/Archive

complete with checkuser ID. The conclusion was that they're almost definitely sockpuppets, all from the same IP range, but they're too active and productive to block the whole range. I'm not really sure what else can be done - reasoning with them hasn't worked, banning hasn't worked, semi-protection won't stop them from using more sockpuppets, and nobody will ban the IP. Mokele (talk) 14:32, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I put sockpuppet templates on the user pages of all the accounts named in the SPI. This causes their names to show up in the category. Citing this category may help in the future if you need to report any more socks to AIV. That board may not always take action on socks unless the evidence is very clear. EdJohnston (talk) 16:57, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Black Caiman

Found two photos on Flickr: File:Jacaré Açú.jpg and File:Black Caiman Skeleton and Shed Skin.jpg and am working on getting a full-body adult shot (awaiting response from photographer to change the licensing). Hopefully you can use these in the article. howcheng {chat} 16:51, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

The former looks like a good candidate for the infobox picture, though something clearer would be nice. On my ever-growing to-do list is a return visit to St. Augustine Gator Farm, which has specimens of all 23 living crocodilian species, to get photos for taxoboxes. Mokele (talk) 12:35, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I was able to get these two photos released. Can you verify that these are indeed black caimans? File:Black caiman Macrofotografie 1.jpg and File:Black caiman Macrofotografie 2.jpg. Thanks. howcheng {chat} 20:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, those are both Yacare caimans. They have the distinctive "eyebrow" on top of the eye, a ridge between & in front of the eyes, more "scraggly" teeth, and a more dorso-ventrally flattened head than the black caiman. Plus, the photo info says Argentina, which is well within the Yacare's range but beyond the Black Caiman's range. Distinguishing between some of the similar species can be very difficult. Here's a good resource: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/cnhc/csl.html Mokele (talk) 22:42, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:RFPP

Hi! Your request re: Cheetah was spot on, and I've changed protection back to indefinite semi protection. Which makes me concerned about Snake... I declined your request because I'm simply not see enough edits to justify changing PC1 to semi. My usual criteria for this is if there are too many daily edits for reviewers to manage then it should be semi'd. With "Snake" I'm seeing only a few edits per day. So... I'm concerned that you're seeing a problem that I've missed? TFOWR 16:37, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Part of it is skewed - I've been away at conferences for a few weeks, and over that time, there was a fairly large accumulation of vandalism. Mostly, though, it's just the trend - under semi-protection, I almost never had to revert snake edits, but now there's a sudden upswing (even if not as high as cheetah). I worry in part because it's a high-visibility article and tends to attract a lot of vandalism during periods without protection (several other high-visbility snake articles such as black mamba and king cobra also have this issue, but are protected ATM, IIRC). Mokele (talk) 16:44, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Understood. I quite like PC1, because it allows IPs to contribute, but it isn't great for high-vis articles. I've got Snake watchlisted - I'll return it to indef'd semi as soon as it becomes obvious PC1 isn't working. Thanks for providing the detail I was missing! TFOWR 17:00, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Tiger article

Hi there, I accepted a recent edit regarding crocs eating tigers; it seemed good faith though I expressed reservations about the quality of the source given. Since it wasn't obvious vandalism, I let it go through. Just after it was accepted however, I saw your last edit summary (which made me laugh). Sounds like you know what you're talking about, so feel free to revert my accept. Cheers, Northumbrian (talk) 18:49, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Your recent edit to Bullfrog

Why didn't you tell me about the revert? I needed to add those pictures to User:Chemicalinterest/Unused pictures. Thank you. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Dear

In Largest organisms you reverted not only the questionable anonymous editions but Salicaceae's and mine too! Don´t worry, I fixed it... Regards :) --Againme (talk) 17:37, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, wasn't paying attention when scanning my watchlist for the day. Mokele (talk) 18:48, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi!

Why is it incorrect? --Againme (talk) 17:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

The original version basically says that Elephants are largest extant land animal, but many past terrestrial animals were bigger than elephants. Your edit changed it to state that some dinosaurs were larger than blue whales, which is factually incorrect - while some may have been longer, none have been "larger" (in the sense of mass). Mokele (talk) 17:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

All right. --Againme (talk) 18:07, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Monotypic reptiles

Thanks for the information. I will keep up to date on this. I created the category:Monotypic (genera) reptiles

Cheers, Bruinfan12 (talk) 13:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Gorgonocephalus

If there are two animals that have been known by this name shouldn't the article become a disambiguation page instead of deleted? Abyssal (talk) 18:48, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

No, because it means that outside of WP, the name Gorgonocephalus is taxonomically invalid, as it's pre-occupied. ICZN rules prevent this, and the newer name cannot be regarded as taxonomically valid. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the current names of Gorgonocephalus is - the site linked to on the page makes me think it's been subsumed into Gorgonops, but I'm not sure. It's possible nobody has re-addressed it, thus the fossils are without a valid name. Mokele (talk) 19:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Deleting what you do not understand

You deleted useful text. You do it for living, but you are not the only one who does it for living. I am a biomechanist, work in a University, studied in USA, and discussed my recent edit with the Physiologist in my Department, who checked my text and approved it. Both the Physiologist and I are specialized in sport science, so we do know something. We KNOW that people does not interpret that formula correctly. We have met MANY people, including esteemed colleagues, who believe that muscle mass alone (or worst, muscle length alone) is enough to predict muscle force.

Since you work with animals, you should know the main reason why a spider jumps higher (relative to its stature) than a cat and a cat higher than a horse. If muscle mass were proportional to force, this would not happen. Unfortunately, as far as plain geometrical factors (such as volume, area and length) are concerned, the force is only due to fiber "thickness" (muscle thickness in non-pennate muscles), and increasing fiber length (muscle length in non-pennate muscles) do contribute in increasing mass a lot, but do nothing as far as force is concerned.

This also explains why muscle mass, relative to weight, is higher in heavier animals. If muscle mass were proportional to body weight, and all animals had muscles as thin as those of a spider, they would not be able to lift their own body. That's why the legs of an elephant are so thick, and those of a spider so thin.

I agree that the formula with volume is not useful for practical studies and rarely seen in textbooks, so, I do not insist about it. People, however, judges muscle mass from muscle volume. You might know that, in body builders, muscle mass is partly due to capilarization and therefore blood content, rather than fiber thickness. So in this case assuming that mass is proportional to force is even more questionable.

Do you understand now the relevance of what you deleted?

Paolo.dL (talk) 10:13, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The topic is relevant, and I'm more than aware of how it works, but there were three main problems - 1) the paragraph was very poorly put together, to the point that I was only able to follow it because I already knew the answer, 2) the location actually made it *less* clear what the formula & thus the section was about, and 3) the tone was instructional rather than encyclopedic. It could simply be replaced with "Muscle force is directly proportional to PCSA, not to muscle mass or fiber length." and referenced it to any intro to biomechanics textbook or any of several courses on the web, without the need for a whole paragraph and with considerably more clarity.

Also, where is ACSA used? I've never seen it in the primary literature, either for humans or animals - it's always been PCSA in my experience. Plus, it's an inferior measurement anyway. Mokele (talk) 11:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

ACSA is used as opposed to PCSA, and their relationship is ACSA = PCSA * sin(theta). And it is frequently used, as far as I know. I have seen it in USA for the first time, and even the Physiologist in my Department has a diapo which shows both ACSA as a yellow area, and PCSA as a red area. Similar to figure 1 in the article. Anyway, it makes sense to compare them, doesn't it? And if you compare them, you need a name for both, so that for instance, when you correct a student, you can say: "be careful, you should use the physiological area here, not the anatomical, because the muscle is pennate". Paolo.dL (talk) 12:40, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I've just never seen it given a real name before - in comparative biomechanics, we just explain why it's useless in an intro course and then never mention it again. Of course, it helps that we can measure PCSA and/or pennation angle by just cutting the muscle out and doing histological sections, which they don't exactly like you doing on humans. Mokele (talk) 13:12, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage

Hi. As you recently commented in the straw poll regarding the ongoing usage and trial of Pending changes, this is to notify you that there is an interim straw poll with regard to keeping the tool switched on or switching it off while improvements are worked on and due for release on November 9, 2010. This new poll is only in regard to this issue and sets no precedent for any future usage. Your input on this issue is greatly appreciated. Off2riorob (talk) 23:41, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Middle America vs. Central America

I just undid your edit on the agouti page. You changed Middle America to Central America; the two are not interchangeable. Most notably, Mexico (where there are agoutis) is not included in the latter. Was your edit based on this common misconception, or have I misinterpreted the action? Natureguy1980 (talk)

I didn't realize "middle america" was a real term - I've never seen it used in the biological literature. Mokele (talk) 01:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)