Template:Did you know nominations/Afghan pika

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by 97198 (talk) 05:59, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Afghan pika

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~~... that a female Afghan pika may have as many as 30 offspring in a year?~~

Reviewed: Alton Lemon

5x expanded by Cwmhiraeth (talk). Self nominated at 08:10, 10 September 2014 (UTC).

5x expansion, new enough, long enough, no copyvio found or anything else that violates policy. The hook could be improved, though. The current one is interesting and verified by the source. However, the source states that "litter size averaging from 5.2 to 7.1, producing as many as five litters annually." That would mean that the pika could certainly have as many as 30 offspring in a year, but also (7.1*5=35.5) as many as 35, or as few as 26; and all of it is on an average. 30 seems a bit arbitrary in the light of this. Still, I understand the thinking and it's not wrong so I'd say it's fine to go ahead with the hook as it is. But as a backup, here is another one:

ALT 1 ... that a female Afghan pika may have five litters of offspring in a year, each with between five and seven juveniles? It's a bit more clumsy but perhaps less arbitrary. Also, what do you call a baby pika? Yakikaki (talk) 09:54, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Maybe a "pikelet"? How about ALT2? The "may" allows for a smaller number than 30 and the "more" a larger one. If we used ALT1, I would have to alter the article to include the range "5.2 to 7.1" which is not there at the moment, and I don't much care for fractions of a pikelet! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:14, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

ALT2 ... that a female Afghan pika may have 30 or more offspring in a year?

Haha, no, let's avoid splitting the poor pikelets into fractions. :) ALT 2 looks excellent, elegantly solved. Yakikaki (talk) 10:16, 10 September 2014 (UTC)