A fact from Galidiinae appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 October 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Why had they been so placed/named? They had no genetic testing, so they were just going on shape and behavior, what else did they have to go on? Chrisrus (talk) 21:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Please cite reliable sources to assess why galidiines were formerly classified as mongooses. There are other possible reasons than the ones you gave, such as geography or the subjective opinion of a taxonomist who didn't know what to do with them. Ucucha 21:38, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Very well, you are saying you don't know why they had been so classified and named? Chrisrus (talk) 21:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And, as you see it, the three possiblities are, the morphology, the behavior, as we had it, and, the thing I left out, the fact that they are Indian Ocean species? Chrisrus (talk) 01:28, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Behavior is unlikely. Virtually nobody classifies mammals on the basis of behavior, and to the extent that it happens it is mainly a phenomenon of recent years.
I gave a second possibility, which was that a taxonomist just didn't know what else to do with them, and that was not a joke. For an example of that, I suggest you look at the genus Oryzomys, which before 2006 basically consisted of all oryzomyines which hadn't been classified into another genus. It included a few large clusters of species that were considered morphologically similar, but also some random species that just didn't fit anywhere else (like O. polius, O. hammondi, and O. balneator). It is entirely possible that something similar happened to the galidiines; I don't know enough about feliformian classification to assess how likely it is.
But all this is baseless speculation as long as we don't look at the sources. Some of the references given here may help. Unfortunately, I don't have access to them right now. From the text of that book, it does appear that galidiines are at least not morphologically identical to mainland African mongooses; for example, Galidia has "some of the structural features of civets and some of mongooses". Several of the Malagasy genera have stripes of some sort, although herpestids are said to have a generally more uniform color pattern than viverrids. Also, Galidia does not agree with the behavioral characteristics given for mongooses in general: it lives in humid forests, not open country, is also active at night, and is not very social. This is to a greater or lesser extent also true for the other three galidiine genera. But I don't know to what extent the sources they cite for separating Herpestidae, including Galidiinae, from Viverridae explicitly discuss the characters of galidiines, and that is what is important to us here. Ucucha 01:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To expand on this, one of the assertions I placed a {{fact}} tag on was the one saying that a morphological similarity to herpestids is the cause of them being called "mongooses". I did a quick Google books search to find the earliest source referring to galidiines as "mongooses", and that appears to be this. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to give its considerations for choosing that name. This article is also interesting historically and because it, at the very least, explicitly considers galidiines not to be mongooses: "In some [the galidiines] resemble the mongooses, in some the genets and civets, in some they differ from both those sections." Ucucha 02:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this appears to be a quite significantly earlier source for the common names: 1894 (it uses a spelling variation, "mungoose", that might merit a mention at the mongoose page). It classifies both galidiines and herpestids as Viverridae, though, and does not say why it calls galidiines mungooses. Ucucha 02:14, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting, thank you. I have also been googling around to see how much I can find about how this happened. I encourage you to fill out the story of the words and referents in question in the article. Chrisrus (talk) 08:35, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just started expanding the article. It might as well go to DYK now (though it'll need a little more expansion, which I'll take care of), any thoughts for a good hook? Ucucha 15:21, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's nominated at DYK now, see here. Ucucha 19:49, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
