Talk:Amphicyonidae

Lingo

Any one feel that the language of this article is far too technical? It uses a lot of scientific words and gives a lot of figures, but doesn't really say much. 162.83.254.190 (talk) 03:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Nope. Rather straightforward, in my opinion. There could probably be a couple more links, but other than that, this article is rather simple to read. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with that for the Taxonomy section but I think the rest is fine. (sorry don't know how to sign this post)

Expansion

Note the expansion and clarity currently displayed. This uses a similar appearance on other articles of "bear dogs". Noles1984 (talk) 23:18, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

The other "Bear Dog"

As you know, sometimes "Bear Dog" means an animal which is intermediate between a bear and a dog. It's like Mole Shrew. But as you will immediately understand, the term can also be a dog which is named after the fact that it's used to hunt bears, like "bird dog" or "wolf hound" or some such. I arrived at this page looking for the latter, but was offered no re-direct. I know that that there is at least one dog called a "bear dog", but can't find its article. It's called something like a "Kartelian Bear Dog", I know that's not correct, but it's not to far off. It started with a "k" and ended with "-ian", and then "Bear Dog". There may be more, I don't know. Can we find that and any other such bear dogs and put a redirect at the top of the page so lost people like me can find their way to the bear dog that they are looking for? Thanks for any attention you could give to this matter.

Oh, by the way, interesting article about this referent. The only thing I think it needs is an artist's reconstruction, a drawing or painting, or two. I know that's hard to find the rights for. Chrisrus (talk) 06:29, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. I'll fix that. Anaxial (talk) 21:23, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. If I find any more such "bear dogs", I'll let you know. Maybe this is the only one. Chrisrus (talk) 23:28, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I did briefly check on Google; it was the only one I could find. Anaxial (talk) 20:20, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I have been wondering for a while now about whether it would be better to move the article to Amphicyonidae to avoid confusion caused by the rather ambiguous vernacular name, not being a bear or a dog. Thoughts? --Kevmin § 21:40, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't know. I can't find the "Wiki:" guideline right now, but there is one that urges us to use common names whenever possible as the primary title and to use the article(s) to deal with any problems that doing so would entail. I'll see if I can find it, but it's very convincing in its reasoning. There are many cases where the referents of the common term refers to more than one taxon, or some other mis-alignment between common name and technical term. Experts usually want to force everything into the taxonomy, but Wikipedian concensous often prefers the guideline. For example, see pocupine, which is two wholely different taxons. You could argue for it's splitting, but should the articles Dog and Wolf be merged because taxonomy does not distinguish among them? No one yet has argued for this position. So no expert seems to want to have the encyclopedia follow taxonomy exactly in all cases. Each case is different, but please don't go against the guideline unless you just can't find any other way. Chrisrus (talk) 23:28, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

The guideline you are thinking of says to just the most commonly used name if possible, no matter if the name is a vernacular or scientific name. Just to note dog and wolf are regarded as taxonomically separate, specifically domestic dogs are a subspecies of the Canis lupus. I am not going against the guideline though, one of the main concepts advocated in Wikipedia:Article titles is precision, which the current title here fails, as this is neither a bear or a dog and as you pointed out can be easily confused for the dog breed Karelian Bear Dog, thus making it a very ambiguous name at best. This article also fall under Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) for which "Bear dog" also fails to meet the requirements. By the way what exactly is a "taxonym" Ive never seen that word before (is it even a word??) --Kevmin § 23:48, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

There are a few Google hits for "taxonym", including the Wikipedia article -onym, but I don't think it can be a very common word. As for the article title, I don't think it fails the precision test, since "bear-dog" is the common vernacular name for the taxon (see, for example, [1]). One might argue, I suppose, that it isn't a well known enough vernacular name, but I've seen it in quite a few books, so I'm not very convinced on that one. Anaxial (talk) 20:20, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Improving This Article

I would like to see more about this animal as it is far from just a stub category as this was a monstrous beast with the features of a lion, a bear and a wolf all rolled up into one. Recently, it has drawn more attention from animators who recreated the creature in 3d and it became an extremely fascinating creature and among their more popular creatures. When did it go extinct as the article doesn't actually give much detail? The many breeds and so forth would be better if they were added here as separate sections since so little is known about them. Here are a few links of videos that could be added http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWN2FRWzRL4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQo-jF765Eg&feature=related http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/prehistoric-washington-dc-bear-dog.html

Adding videos to the topic would gain more attention and make for a better presentation. If people here were willing, my own site is dedicated to 3d art and we have people who make 3d mesh characters where we could do some art for Wiki a lot cheaper than special effects groups charge. But this topic could definately be improved. I'm not good at editing Wiki pages so I don't want to add anything and screw this up but if anyone else is interested in contributing more to this article or considering adding new segments here for each of the bear dogs than all being separate, it would be much easier to add information when more discoveries are made about this powerful beast.

Contact me if this topic is updated(Armorbeast (talk) 06:36, 25 October 2011 (UTC))

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Hyena?

Is this animal closely related, or have some similarities to, a hyena? That restoration looks almost like a spotted hyena, except with a smaller body and thinner tail (Sorta like a mongoose or lemur). And 'bear dog' is kinda what a Hyena literally is and looks like (though for some reason it's more related to cats than either?).

--Aneyh (talk) 05:22, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Bear dogs are most closely related to living bears, and both are caniform carnivorans. Hyenas are felimorph carnivorans descended from civet-like animals closely related to civets and mongooses. Both groups split off from each other during the early Eocene.--Mr Fink (talk) 05:38, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Actually the bear dogs are currently thought to be closer to true dogs than bears. At least the Amphicyonidae are. There is another similar group, which are also sometimes called bear dogs or dog bears, the Hemicyoninae, which are a subfamily of Ursidae.

As for the similarity with Hyaenas, it could be a case of convergent evolution. Perhaps they share a similar ecological niche, although this is pure speculation and the article has nothing on the cranial structure or mode of predation. The bone-crushing dogs, the Borophaginae, also share some features with more derived hyaenas. More generally many small feliform and caniform carnivores also resemble each other more than their larger cousins.   Jts1882 | talk  07:01, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Mistake with clade

I’m looking at Wikipedia’s other charts on the subject, and they seem to put the Bear Dog closet to bears than dogs. Is there a way we can figure out which grouping is correct? Dogblock (talk) 14:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Do you mean "dog-bears" of the subfamily Hemicyoninae? These are variously an extinct subfamily of or sister family to Ursidae. It seems "dog-bears" and "bear dogs" are different beasts. The exact position of dog bears (Amphicyonidae) is uncertain, with them usually place in a polytomy with canids and actoids or as sister family to canids.   Jts1882 | talk  14:26, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 13 May 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Megan B.... ^{It’s all coming to me} till the end of time 09:56, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

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Bear dog → Amphicyonidae – "Bear dog" is a colloquial title that is only informally used, and does not satisfy the criterion for being a "Common name" for this group Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:59, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support. The taxonomic name is unambiguous (even if it does mean 'ambiguous dog'). Searching 'bear dog' seems to turn up various dog breeds more than the extinct family. Also there seems to be lots of alternative spellings, such as 'beardog' and 'bear-dog'. YorkshireExpat (talk) 07:12, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support per above. Bear dog is not an unambiguous name that refers only to this family, as pointed out, searching for bear dog pulls up any number of other results. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 07:56, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support - per above. FunkMonk (talk) 00:48, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.