Talk:Quokka

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kmartin2.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Dreadful English

"This has been proven and experimented by scientists who have taken blood tests on wild quokkas on Rottnest Island" - who WRITES this barely literate nonsense? (a) Scientists don't 'prove' anything. (b) 'and experimented by scientists' is meaningless word-salad, utter ghibberish. Here is more: "over its evolution, its system has been built for arboreal locomotion". Good God. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.84.208 (talk) 21:09, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Capitalization

Why is Quokka capitalized? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.155.243.126 (talk • contribs) .

It is a species, and species can be capitalised as they are specific. The more broad terms, such as marsupial, cannot be capitalised. --liquidGhoul 02:29, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

That's TERRIBLE English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.84.208 (talk) 21:07, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Photo

The second photo [1], looks more like a Tasmanian Pademelon to me. Both can be seen at Melbourne Zoo. Note the large ears and light coloured tail. Ghouston 11:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks like I was right: 06:14, 17 August 2009‎ Ozraptor4 (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (6,489 bytes) (-65)‎ . . (→‎Status: removed image which is not of a quokka (Setonix) but of a pademelon (Thylogale).) Ghouston (talk) 01:13, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

"quokka" is NOT a proper noun

The word "quokka" SHOULD NOT BE CAPITALIZED. A(n English) species name is NOT a proper noun; a proper noun is a SPECIFIC person, place, or thing: a quokka named "Quirky the Quokka" is capitalized, but that's it. By means of example, Wikipedia's own definition of "proper noun" uses this as an example: "For example, someone might be named 'Tiger Smith' despite being neither a tiger nor a smith." philiptdotcom 08:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:MaM and WP:BIRD for why it is capitalized. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:22, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Someone needs to edit this page

Note:

"...two islands off the coast of that area, Bald Island, Rottnest Island, Garden Island and rarely Penguin Island."

It says "two," then proceeds to list FOUR islands. Is it protected on all four? (If not, which two?)

Then: "Both islands are free of foxes and cats." This needs to be re-worded to reflect "all islands" (or otherwise re-worded to be unambiguous if the "four" islands is correct).

Also, information from a guide on a recent trip to Rottnest Island was that there were a couple of mainland populations of quokka (recently discovered? maybe in predator-proof fences? not sure of the details; someone who can cite a reference should modify the page)...

P.S. - Here's a general reference: http://www.perthzoo.wa.gov.au/Animals--Plants/Australia/Australian-Bushwalk/Quokka/

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Philiptdotcom (talk • contribs) 08:36, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

There are also some still on the mainland. I've seen one in the entrance area of Valley of the Giants near Walpole. The information there also reads that they were once abundant and still some are left there. . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.225.201.50 (talk) 20:21, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and there is plenty more. Dreadful English throughout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.84.208 (talk) 21:10, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

This article has a lot of good information. I believe adding more information about the vulnerable status of the quokka would add to the article. In addition, adding some new information about the quokka would be helpful. This is a rather small article as is, and the last time it was updated appears to be in 2014. Adding in some new, relevant information could be helpful. Hpw27 (talk) 02:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Happy?

Mention why they "look happy" to humans. Jidanni (talk) 11:17, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Only mammal native to Rottnest Island?

@John beta: Thanks for being bold on your recent edit. Can you provide a source for your claim that White-striped free-tailed bat are native to the island? Maybe Familiarfrog (talk · contribs) (who added the source here) could shed more light on this claim? Here's to a wonderful discussion! Elfabet (talk) 13:28, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused with the discussion. Do you want to tell that White-striped free-tailed bat are native or non-native to the island? Rottnest Island Wildlife website provides a Factsheet on White Striped Free-tail bat with the description of the species habitat on the island, but it's rather generic. Could you please clarify? Thank you. (Familiarfrog (talk) 16:15, 7 March 2019 (UTC))

References

ARKive

The whole of Wikipedia's natural history pages need to be edited to remove links to ARKive as, extremely sadly, it has been forced to shut down due to lack of funding. All links now redirect to a page on the Wildscreen website, explaining that it closed on 2019/02/28.

We should never take these sites for granted, thinking they'll always be there because, one day, they won't be… I was devastated when I found it'd gone…

ARKive 2003-2019 RIP :'0( — Preceding unsigned comment added by Margolotta (talk • contribs) 05:31, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Rottennest isn't 'Dutch'

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rotten#Dutch

Obviously "Rotte nest" used to be some version of Dutch, as that's the construction used at the time, but when saying "named the island 'Rotte nest', which comes from the Dutch word Rottennest" then the valid construction should be "rattennest" (Dutch is confusing when it comes to combined words: https://www.encyclo.nl/begrip/RATTENNEST ). I edited this, but User:Elmidae reverted the edit, so not really sure what to do about it.

David Mulder (talk) 19:47, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

How about following the source? I'd assume that "Rottenest" did use to be the way to spell this, back in the whenever. In absence of a source stating otherwise, and to avoid confusion with modern spelling, one could just rephrase to named the island "Rottenest", meaning "rat nest" - that's the uncontroversial gist of the source. (also, removed a stray "n") --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:17, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Willem de Vlamingh named the island in 1696, far before the Dutch language had official spelling rules (1863). Both the pronunciation of ratten and rotten were pretty much interchangeable and single or double letters for concatinations were also up in the air. De Vlamingh wasn’t too original with naming stuff. He discovered black swans on the Swan River and named Rottenest after he thought quokkas were big rats. Following current rules, we’d spell it Ratteneiland, but we use the original records for the name, so Rottenest was the Dutch given name at the time.[2]

The etymology for rat is unknown, although it’s thought to go back to the Latin rôdo for rodent. _{[J. de Vries, 1964: Etymologisch woordenboek p.176]}

It wouldn’t surprise me if the pronunciation of rat was more like rot, since the language written by poet G.A. Bredero (1585-1618) is accompanied with the annotation that a single closed ‘a’ is pronounced like e (as in var→ver) or like o (as in smargens→’s morgens). _{[Bredero/Tjeenk Willink, 1963/1977: Klucht van de koe]}

In summary: Rottenest is definitely Dutch. Jasperiscool (talk) 13:34, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Quokka selfies

I think that maybe there should be something about the trend of tourists and quokkas taking selfies together. IlSoupylI (talk) 15:07, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Babys

They throw there baby's a at predators 206.188.154.132 (talk) 16:26, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I have spent a couple of hours trying to find authoritative sources/academic papers on this problem. Popular sources say that they don't 'throw' babies at predators, rather, when in flight from a predator their pouches become lax, and the babies often fall out. That would still constitute offspring abandonment/sacrifice.

This article mentions two Australian professors; I looked through their on-line bibliographies, couldn't find mention of the phenomenon. BooksXYZ (talk) 15:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

In this article by Hayward et al. (the lead author of which is quoted in the link that you provided), pouch release upon being approached while in traps is discussed. It hasn't yet been determined if this behaviour is due to a physical expulsion from the pouch by the mother or simply due to falling out of the pouch during evasive action. They do, however, suggest that it's more likely that this is a behavioural response given the 'muscular control that female quokkas have over the pouch opening'.

In my humble uninformed opinion, if pouches really were so loose that quokka young could fall out easily during movement, one would expect to see a much higher frequency of abandoned quokka young, and indeed a much lower population of quokkas as this would be a very detrimental trait to have that nearly negates the benefit of having a pouch in the first place. Mediocre.marsupial (talk) 12:21, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Conservation biology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2023 and 21 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Krhagan (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Pelang5115, Hreuter4.

— Assignment last updated by Pelang5115 (talk) 14:07, 23 March 2023 (UTC)