Talk:Wojtek (bear)

Military history: World War II Stub‑class

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

Stub

This article has been rated as Stub-class on the project's quality scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	World War II task force

A fact from Wojtek (bear) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 7 June 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the bear Wojtek was an officially enlisted soldier of the Polish II Corps and a participant in the Battle of Monte Cassino?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/June.

Wikipedia

Article title

I understand that "Wojtek" is the more accurate transliteration of his Polish name ('vɔjtɛk), but if his English name was spelled "Voytek" in actual use, should not we use the latter for this article. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 12:58, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, Wojtek was his name, as that is an actual polish name. Voytek was not his name, it just may have been written that way for non polish speakers to pronounce. I say we keep the article as is. Salted Dragon (talk) 01:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

picture

Can we get an actual picture of him, not just a bear of the same species? I have a couple of pictures of this bear with my grandad, how do I upload it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jemiluke (talk • contribs) 12:28, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Biography

I want to edit this article and put it in the style of a biographical template and arrange the information accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bearherd (talk • contribs) 17:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Syrian vs. Iranian vs. Persian Brown Bear

It looks like there's a minor edit issue going on with the species of bear with reversions from Syrian Brown Bear to Iranian Brown Bear to Persian Brown Bear. This hints at a typical Wikipedia culture war in the offing. In the interest of furthering the article, I am going to revert the article to what appears to be the last canonical version of the popular name of the species to Syrian Brown Bear. I suspect changing the contested name to "Iranian" or "Persian" is a misunderstanding between the popular name of the species in English, and the nationality of the bear (if bears, indeed, can said to have a "nationality."). The article on Syrian Brown Bear does mention Wojtek as being FROM Iran, but the popular name of the species isn't affected. For example, a Canadian Goose doesn't have to be actually from Canada (I speak from experience as we have several native non-migrating flocks of Canadian Geese near where I live in the US). So one wouldn't change the species of Canadian Goose to Mexican Goose if that bird happened to be born, and live, in Mexico.

I recommend that any future changes of Wojtek's species be discussed here so that we can come up with a consensus. Also, any experts on popular species names (in English - this is the English language Wikipedia) can also weigh in here. --Quartermaster (talk) 17:52, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed the addition of the bear's "nationality" in the opening sentence. I still hold that an animal probably can't have a "nationality" but can easily accept the adjective "Iranian" as indicating "from Iran." The article currently (and previously) does mention that Wojtek was found in Iran. Does that make this initial use of "Iranian" redundant, or should the "found in Iran" somehow be incorporated into the opening sentence? --Quartermaster (talk) 14:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Abuse

I added the "Animal cruelty" category because they fed it cigarettes. --Ysangkok (talk) 23:59, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another picture

I too have a picture of the bear during his service with my grandfather. He was one of the few men strong enough to hold the bear on chain. Panjir (talk) 18:13, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Panjir. It would be interesting to see your picture. Please consider uploading it to Wikimedia Commons under a free license. See here for more information on how to upload the image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard Cheers, mgiganteus1 (talk) 00:23, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How did Wojtek manage to carry ammo?

I'm perplexed about this, and the article fails to address it.--Remurmur (talk) 18:04, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]