Talk:Eurasian water shrew

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A fact from Eurasian water shrew appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 September 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Eurasian water shrew produces venom that can kill a field vole?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Eurasian water shrew.

Wikipedia

Negative claims[edit]

Suppose you made the claim "Richard New Forest doesn't eat dog", and I were to ask you to prove that claim. You couldn't. The burden of proof would be on me, to demonstrate that you have in fact eaten dog. Similarly, the claim "water shrews cannot puncture human skin" cannot be proven, it can only be disproven if it is false. EAE (Holla!) 03:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What are you saying about this article? Chrisrus (talk) 04:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments above copied from User talk:Richard New Forest and discussion moved from there.

There are several points here.

Firstly, it is simply not true that negative claims need no references, which is the claim made in the edit summary ([1]). All claims need references, and the fact tag was properly applied.

What you seem to be saying is that the claim about water shrews and human skin is not provable. It seems clear to me that in fact it is: a series of test bites by water shrews would prove it either true or false. As it happens I was not bitten by the few live water shrews I've handled, but I have, for example, been bitten by a pipistrelle bat, which certainly tried to penetrate my skin but could not. It would not be hard to prove the case for water shrews one way or the other, and I volunteer my finger to try the experiment.

In this case the claim appears plausible and is provable, and I think it should stay in for the moment. It does not have a ref, so it should have a fact tag until one appears. If no ref appears after a reasonable time, it should be deleted. Richard New Forest (talk) 12:17, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Range[edit]

The article says that its range extends to Ireland but the map does not show Ireland as being part of the its range. Not sure which is correct so I won't make any changes but thought I would bring attention to it for other editors. Lime in the Coconut 14:18, 10 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]