Talk:Wolverine

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Vandalized[edit]

11/16/06 This page has been vandalized recently, ie the tree frog entry. I surmise that it may be the work of an Ohio State fan since there is a big fooball game between the Michigan Wolverines and Ohio State Buckeyes soon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.48.68.84 (talk) 21:07, 16 November 2006‎ (UTC)[reply]

Size[edit]

The Wolverine Foundation website puts the wolverine's size much smaller than this article (http://www.wolverinefoundation.org/faq.htm). This article also only mentions the maximum size. An idea of what's average could be useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanMoore (talk • contribs) 16:11, 16 May 2006‎ (UTC)[reply]

This entry in wikipedia desperately needs a cleanup.[edit]

Can someone suggest this article as one that is very badly in need of a total re-write? It's awful, filled with claims that really do require citation or even general fact-checking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.184.13.241 (talk) 19:45, 25 June 2006‎ (UTC)[reply]

Gluttony not reflected in English?[edit]

"Purported gluttony is reflected neither in English nor in North Germanic languages. The English word wolverine (alteration of the earlier form wolvering of uncertain origin) probably implies 'a little wolf'. The name in Old Norse, Jarfr, lives on in the regular Icelandic name jarfi, regular Norwegian name jerv, regular Swedish name järv and regular Danish name jærv."

Yes, except 'to wolf' has come to mean 'to devour voraciously' and a wolf 'a cruelly rapacious person.' [dictionary.com].

So, if there was a false etymology it might have been aided by the associations people brought to it by comparing it to a wolf. If wolves were thought of in terms of their eating habits; people might imagine it as more gluttonous than a wolf in its eating habits because of its smaller size. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.121.247.40 (talk) 07:04, 30 June 2009‎ (UTC)[reply]

Question[edit]

description by chantell october 6:38 2009 wolverines are very rair speche they have very sharp claws there discription is they have not to long but long claws they are in a group and in a family of mustelidae.wolverines are from anamali these wolverines are very hard and very rair to find.these wolverines can kill humen speche.I barely know about wolverines somewolverines are very smart.I dont know my question is do wolverines travel? do wolverines live or like the cold? orhot?.please who ever would like to take the time and effort to answer all my questions please and thankyou i would like my answer by tommorrow. but you probabaly cant right answers anywere so you can erase all of mine and right a reply of an answe rplease znd thankyou for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.164.215.85 (talk) 01:50, 19 October 2009‎ (UTC)[reply]

Female wolverine[edit]

I heard that the female wolverine is called an “angeline” and came to Wikipedia to check that and found nothing. So I checked several other sources, and that appears to be correct. It seems like it would be something useful to include somewhere. Dmclean (talk) 03:24, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't sound right to me, and a quick search only reveals unreliable sources that say that. As with all mustelids, be it a ferret, badger, otter, weasel, etc., a male wolverine is called a hob, a female a jill, and the young are kits. Zaereth (talk) 19:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a poetic term for a female wolverine, like "bruin" for a brown bear etc. justinacolmena (talk) 15:30, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Phylogenetic tree?[edit]

Are there any phylogenetic studies that include a cladogram? It would be informative for the taxonomy section to see where exactly Gulo gulo fits among martens. Mariomassone (talk) 09:55, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Family Mustelidae?[edit]

Wolverines seem more like cats than dogs to me, because they can retract their claws like cats, which dogs are unable to do. Also they can growl, hiss, snarl, and yell or almost meow like a cat but they don't have a voice to bark like a dog.

I'm not even sure about the classification because it does not seem that otters other members of the family "Mustelidae" are able to retract their claws like cats and wolverines. And they are certainly not rodents. justinacolmena (talk) 15:38, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you want here, but you must be getting your info from comic books. First, wolverines do not have retractable claws. They are not related to dogs, cats, or rodents. The name mustelidae refers to the smell of the animals in that family. Weasels. Skunks. Badgers. Otters. Minks. Ermine. Ferrets. Mongoose. Ect... They're more related to procyonidae (racoons) than anything else. Zaereth (talk) 20:11, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The etymology of 'Mustelidae' has nothing to do with their scent (the 'mus' part refers to mice) and mongooses are not mustelids. And Mephitidae is more closely related to Mustelidae than Procyonidae is. 2605:59C8:2553:7510:702E:BD7D:2258:623C (talk) 03:04, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Putting the 60+ pound wolverine myth to bed.[edit]

I looked online and in my library to see if I could track down some primary sources for this giant wolverine myth and found nothing. Every chain of references from secondary sources ultimately leads me back to old books or old research I'm not able to access, or they lead me to a primary source that contradicts their own claim. If anyone can find a genuine primary source that asserts a 60 lb weight figure (not including possible isolated cases of gigantism) I'd be interested in seeing it.


Here are five secondary sources I found giving a ~60 lb figure:

Forest Service - lists 5 sources for their figure. 4 of these sources are inaccessible to me and the other is a primary source from Alaska that recorded a maximum weight of 35 lb as part of a survey. Other information from Forest Service studies and employees give ~40 lb figures, and this particular source appears to be a forgotten relic from 2005 or so. I would consider this particular source to be unreliable. ❌

Animal Diversity Web - lists 6 sources. One is the Forest Service link above; one is from Encylopedia Britannica; one is inaccessible to me; the other 3 give 40 lb maximum figures. ADW as a whole is riddled with errors and appears to be held to lower standards of epistemological integrity than even Wikipedia, and thus is unreliable. ❌

Encyclopedia Britannica - lists 8 sources under 'Article History'. One of these sources apparently no longer exists. Three of these offer 50+ lb figures and are sites apparently geared toward children (Cool Antarctica, OneKindPlanet, AZ Animals - not exactly reputable). The remaining four are secondary sources: World Animal Foundation (some random mom blog) gives a figure of 45 lbs max; Defenders of Wildlife gives <35 lbs on average; National Geographic and another children's website give 40 lbs. Once again the article's claims are undermined by its own sources, and after discovering this is the kind of source material Britannica uses I no longer consider it reliable. ❌

University of Minnesota - lists 3 sources that include weight information. One is the Forest Service link above, one is the Animal Diversity Web account, and one is a secondary source (NatureServe) that gives a 15 kg average weight figure with no further source. Now, I'm not sure how I missed this before, but in the very next sentence after UMN gives a 60.6 lb maximum weight they say the maximum is actually 42 lbs. So I guess they're playing both sides! ❌✅

Wild Mammals of North America (1982) gives a ~60 lb maximum based on information in Walker's Mammals of the World. My 5th edition (1991) copy of Walker's bases their ~60 lb figure on information in Hall's The Mammals of North America (1981). I don't have this book and Internet Archive appears to only have the first volume and thus I can't verify, but the American Society of Mammalogists uses this same book as a source for their 39.9 lb weight figure. My intuition tells me the professional mammalogists are operating with the real average range given in Hall 1981 and the encylopedias are running with an isolated case of a statistical outlier. ❌


Now here are six sources giving ~40 lb figures:

University of Alaska, Fairbanks (1980) - 34.8 lb max recorded weight in survey in northwest Alaska. Primary source. ✅

University of Idaho (1996) pg. 19 - 27.3 ± 2.6 lb average weight for male wolverines. Primary source. Also mentions 3 studies elsewhere finding ~33 lb average male weights. Jeff Copeland, the author of this study, is recognized as a wolverine expert. ✅

Banci, V. Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, Wildlife Branch, Victoria, British Columbia, gives a typical maximum weight of ~40 lbs in a technical report published by the United States Forest Service (1994) pg. 99. ✅

The Northern Wolverine Project (2001) pg. 11 concurs with Banci but gives an even more conservative average maximum of ~31 lbs (too low for a maximum, but 31 lbs is a pretty common weight for adult male wolverines). This is one of the sources already being used as reference in this Wikipedia article, albeit with a dead link. ✅

The Wolverine Foundation also concurs with Banci's 40 lb maximum. The Wolverine Foundation is a nonprofit founded and run by professional wildlife biologists, including aforementioned wolverine expert Jeff Copeland. ✅

Mammals of the Soviet Union (1988) pg. 930 gives a maximum of ~42 lbs and also explicitly rebuffs accounts of wolverines weighing 55 lbs or more. It also mentions a study from 1959 giving a maximum weight figure of 40 lbs for North American wolverines. ✅


In summation there is no readily accessible evidence of 60 lb wolverines or any that even come close. Sources giving these figures are dubious at best and outright laughable and/or self-contradictory at worst. While it's certainly possible that there is a 60 lb wolverine out there somewhere, this individual would by no means be representative of the species as a whole. It'd be like an archaeologist digging up the bones of Andre the Giant and declaring that humans could get up to 7'4" tall! While possibly worth mentioning as a curiosity it absolutely shouldn't be used as a maximum in a range. Particularly with wolverines; a species often feared as 'dangerous' despite there not being one single recorded attack on a human by one. The species is badly misunderstood as is, it does nobody any good to propagate this giant wolverine myth.


Now leave my edits alone lol 2605:59C8:2553:7510:EC2A:A421:A960:4A92 (talk) 07:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Natural Enemies[edit]

The sentences at notes 32 and 34 contradict each other Billsmith60 (talk) 00:32, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

How so? Wolverines kill wolves. Wolves kill wolverines. One on one, a wolf is probably no match for a wolverine, but wolverines are loners and wolves have the advantage of numbers, so they usually win in most cases. I agree that the section is just kind of strung together, which is common in Wikipedia articles, where people often add random facts that they found interesting without much regard for overall coherency. The section makes it sound like wolves actively stalk and hunt wolverines for food, but I've never heard of that in all my years of living with both animals. Wolves are more likely to kill one while trying to steal its prey, and visa versa. For the most part, it's very rare for predators to actively stalk and hunt other predators. A bear or a wolf might eat one, or even a human, if it's really, really, really hungry. But as a general rule they don't usually prey on each other. Predator meat is usually tough and gamey, and wolverines are exceptionally oily and smelly.
That's not to say that they won't kill each other. Lions kill cheetahs, not for food, but simply because lions hate cheetahs. But does that count as being a predator of cheetahs? Wolves and wolverines are more apt to avoid each other, unless trying to steal the other's kill. There is only one animal I know of that is known to actively stalk and hunt wolverines for food, and that's a polar bear, but a polar bear will eat damn near anything. So I think the section could probably use someone to go through all the sources and try to make it a little more coherent. Wanna give it a try? Zaereth (talk) 01:01, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your extensive reply confirmed my observation. Regards Billsmith60 (talk) 11:34, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How so? I'm confused. Your limited observations don't really tell me anything. Zaereth (talk) 16:53, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Predators do hunt other Predators. Cats kill ferrets who are predators. 47.197.29.147 (talk) 16:44, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Finnish etymology wrong[edit]

The Finnish word "ahmia" is derived from the word "ahma", not the other way round: https://www.kotus.fi/sanakirjat/suomen_etymologinen_sanakirja/ajankohtaista_etymologiasta/ahmiva_ahma_ja_karhea_karhu.35729.news Juho Rujo (talk) 11:12, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

External link not working[edit]

This link in the external link section does not work.

http://www.rmrs.nau.edu/wildlife/forest_carnivores/wolverine/ 88.193.131.187 (talk) 05:39, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmed ODFW Sighting Lincoln County, Oregon coast[edit]

As of March 2024, 4 sightings have been confirmed by ODFW as being a stray wolverine, in Lincoln County Oregon, which is along the central Oregon coast. Sightings included Cascade Head just north of Lincoln City, as well as near Newport. DNA samples of fur collected from near a footprint in Newport confirmed wolverine sightings. -JJF 2600:6C55:6300:A000:35C4:3871:86DE:C769 (talk) 19:14, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cool! Thanks for sharing. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but this probably is something better suited to newspapers than an encyclopedia, because encyclopedias summarize a subject into rather large strokes and don't focus too much on small details. In other words, we report things in a much broader and long-term perspective. (See: WP:NOTNEWS) It would be different if, maybe in the future, this is confirmed to be a regular habitat rather than just some sample sightings. Others may disagree, though, but either way we'd need reliable sources for this anyway or else it doesn't mean a thing. Zaereth (talk) 19:22, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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