Talk:woolly hippopotamus

RFV discussion: May–June 2023

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

---

woolly hippopotamus

Previously tagged for speedy deletion with the reason "not a real animal" and "it may be a hoax". The following are a variety of uses which may or may not be enough to attest the term, and potentially woolly hippo, though if kept, the definition will almost definitely need changing.

• Uses in the context of Victoria Cave
  • The Yorkshire Dales (1952)
  • Discovering britain (1984), "woolly hippo"
  • Peaks of the Yorkshire Dales (1991), "woolly hippo"
  • Three Peaks and Malhamdale (1992)
  • The most amazing places in Britain's countryside (2009), "woolly hippo"
• Apparently independent uses
  • A Primeval Story (1895)
  • The Chain of Life (1925), mentions taxon Hippopotamus major
  • Current Archeology (c. 1990)
  • Human Evolution Cookbook (2003), "woolly hippo"
  • Memory and the Mediterranean (2011)
  • Last Ape Standing (2013)
• Largely hypothetical uses
  • Making Deep History (2021)

—The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for doing all of this research. Just to save anyone else the trouble, we can all agree that we're essentially starting a new entry here, right? There is no Laniger glaciera, indeed no Laniger (genus), and the hippo fossils we're looking at here reach as far north as England, but clearly not into eastern Europe and north Asia. —Soap— 07:30, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

There's also this work of fiction that talks about woolly hippos[1] but then that may just be referring to the same creature that the Yorkshire archaelogists and the people talking about Hippopotamus Major are discussing, just in a fictional context. If Laniger doesn't exist then this entry requires a lot of work and alteration thus essentially making it a new entry though, yes (somewhat like the joke about Trigger's broom in Only Fools and Horses). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:47, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Hippopotamus major is a synonym of w:Hippopotamus antiquus. I have yet to find Laniger in taxonomic reference databases. DCDuring (talk) 14:24, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I replaced the definition with {{rfdef}} so Google doesn't pick up what looks more and more like a hoax. This, that and the other (talk) 23:00, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Searching for 'wool of the hippopotamus major' and 'wool of the hippopotamus antiquus' yields many hits claiming that this species was not only woolly but lived in the British Isles, so it seems very likely that the descriptions of 'woolly hippos' in Yorkshire caves are referring to the same thing. We could just define 'woolly hippopotamus' as 'Hippopotamus Antiquus' rather than 'Hippopotamus Laniger' and resolve this. I wouldn't call it a hoax but the laniger stuff seems to be mistaken (though the word is used in the binomial names of numerous woolly animals, which is unsurprising as it's Latin for 'woolly'. This can easily be seen by searching on Wikipedia for the word 'laniger' (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Laniger&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=1&ns0=1)). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:14, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1 Can you link to the searches that you did that yielded many results claiming that Hippopotamus major/Hippopotamus antiquus was woolly? The results themselves also works. For me, Googling "wool of the hippopotamus major" and "wool of the hippopotamus antiquus" does not show any hits for me. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 00:26, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

There’s less there than I thought, I should’ve clicked through the links to make sure the books weren’t taking about hairy rhinos, mammoths and elephants only to describe hairy hippos shortly afterwards but there are at least two authors who speculate that the Hippopotamus Major had wool/fur/hair (though clearly none was found on the remains otherwise it would be an assertion, not speculation)(see[2] and [3]). The reference to the ‘British Isles’ is here[4], though it doesn’t specify exactly where, so it may just be talking about Yorkshire rather than the rest of Britain and Ireland. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:10, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

for reference, I find these 19c. quotes that mentioned the postulation that H. major had fur, but both already expressed dubiety towards the idea:

• Laws, Edward (1888), The History of Little England Beyond Wales and the Non-Kymric Colony Settled in Pembrokeshire, p.10 :

  How is it possible to account for the contemporary existence of hippopotamus major and the reindeer in our land? Supposing we deem him to have been a purely northern type of hippopotamus, clad in seal-like fur, as was the rhinoceros tichorinus (a supposition for which there is not a little of evidence), even then how would he get a living in the ice-blocked rivers of the north?

• Dawkins, W. B. (1872), "The Classification of the Pleistocene strata of Britain and the Continent by means of the Mammalia", in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 28(1-2), p.431:

  Mr. Prestwich, fixing his attention more particularly on the evidence afforded by the contorted gravels and ice-borne pebbles in the river-deposits, has inferred that the climate was severe, and that the presence of the Hippopotamus in Britain may be accounted for on the hypothesis that it was clad in wool and hair, like the Mammoth. To this Sir John Lubbock objects that so aquatic an animal could not have lived here at the time that the rivers were frozen over. It seems to me also that such a change in the physique of the animal as Mr. Prestwich supposes could not have existed without leaving behind greater differences than we find between it and its living African representative. There were also other African animals in Britain, as well as the Hippopotamus. [edit: just noticed that Dawkins (1872) is talking about the same hypothesis as Making Deep History (2021) listed by The Editor's Apprentice]

蒼鳥 _{fawk. tell me if i did anything wrong.} 01:03, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

We just need attestation of the usage of woolly hippopotamus. Like taxonomic names, especially the names of some extinct organism known only from partial fossils, such a name is a hypothesis. Our concern about whether there were such things affects how we qualify the wording of our definition, whether in the definition, with a label, or, if necessary, a usage note. DCDuring (talk) 12:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

BTW, the efficient way to produce a definition in a wiki is to work from the citations visible in the entry. That way all parties interested in defining and knowing something about usage context don't always have to labor through links and get distracted by things of, at best, marginal relevance. DCDuring (talk) 12:49, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I touched up the definition just now because it looks like some of the original hoax material crept back in. We need to be clear what we're doing here ... from the discussion above it looks like we're talking about a vernacular name for a real animal that has a known taxonomic name, Hippopotamus major. It's not known if it actually had wool, but the animal existed and has been described as a woolly hippopotamus. Thus I think we should also remove the mythical descriptor, but I only took out what to me was the most obvious piece of the definition that didn't belong.

Just to be clear, the original entry was absolutely a hoax, though perhaps the person who added it here didn't realize that and added the entry in good faith. I can't blame them for that; they probably could have been more careful, but we all make mistakes. I don't assign any blame to the people who are running the invented species wiki from which it came, either; it sounds a lot like the hypothetical hurricanes wiki I remember from not too long ago. I think we should move quickly on from how this page got started, though, and focus on whether we can write an entry that meets our own much stricter standards. —Soap— 13:51, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I brought those up mainly because this – whether the attestations of woolly hippopotamus are indeed referring to an actual real-life species that once existed, regardless of woolly being a mischaracterisation or not – though encyclopedic, does kinda affect how we should define the term, as you've said (in particular whether we should include the term mythical or not). Of course, in my previous reply I wasn't providing any material that should go in the entry. Just trying to provide a piece of context, I suppose 蒼鳥 _{fawk. tell me if i did anything wrong.} 14:41, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

It looks like the term originated as a hypothesis about the hippopotamus bones found in the UK. "They must have had fur because England is too cold for hippopotamuses and look at all the woolly versions of other mammals." I haven't seen any evidence that strongly supports or disproves that hypothesis. However, it does seem like the kind of thing that people want to believe, giving it some of the same kind of reality as unicorn. DCDuring (talk) 15:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

There have been lots of hypotheses about fossil creatures that have been rendered implausible or worse by subsequent findings (or maybe just unfashionable by other cultural change). Mythical to me implies origins in pre-scientific eras or among non-scientific peoples, though the difference between mythical and now thought false is a bit vague. DCDuring (talk) 01:27, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Cited? If we change the definition slightly to define it as a European hippopotamus and/or allow references to 'woolly hippos' as an alternative form for 'woolly hippopotamus' then this easily passes in any case. We could probably add another sense of 'a fictional or mythical hippopotamus that's coated with wool' to complement the 'hypothetical' creature sense we now have too. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, this term embodies a hypothesis about the nature of the hippopotamuses whose fossil remains were discovered in England. "They must have been woolly because it is cold in England and similar cold-tolerating animals are called 'woolly'". I don't think there was ever strong evidence that they were of a species distinct from other European hippos.

That's the point I'm trying to make. There's a hypothesis that the English fossils were of woolly hippos but there are also hypotheses that French, Spanish and Greek fossils are also of woolly hippos - clearly the same species of hippo is being referred to in all of these instances and the existing sense doesn't quite have the three required cites, so I'm suggesting rewording the definition to refer to European hippos rather than just English ones. That way the definition will be more clearly supported by the cites, it will be supported by a greater number of them and it will be more accurate and informative due to it better reflecting the (alleged) range of this (alleged) creature. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:22, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

RFV-passed, although note that I adjusted the definition slightly as suggested. Some of the identified cites refer to these creatures being found in places other than England. This, that and the other (talk) 06:12, 29 June 2023 (UTC)