Talk:Eastern massasauga

Merge

Massasauga Rattlesnake is a less comprehensive article, I'd like to merge it into this article and make it into a redirect. -Dawson 17:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Excellent idea. The sooner the better. I added some categories to the Massasauga Rattlesnake page so that it will remain more visible in the mean time. -Jwinius Wed Apr 26 19:11:51 UTC 2006

NPOV

It is very obvious the author is from Canada. While I have no problem with that, it is not appropriate for an article to constantly start out, "in Onatrio..." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.152.125.152 (talk) 19:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

More Info

There is no information here about what these snakes eat, or what may eat them. 11:35, 1 September 2008 (UTC) —Unsigned comment by Bao Pu (talk)

Does this look better? Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 21:18, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction

This article on the Massasauga Rattlesnake states that it is the ONLY venomous snake in Michigan and Ontario however, the Wikipedia article on the Common garter snake (see URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake) states that "Garters were long thought to be nonvenomous, but recent discoveries have revealed that they do in fact produce a mild neurotoxic venom." The direct quotation mentioned above also includes a cited reference thus one would likely draw the conclusion that the article on Garter Snakes is correct. Although this may be considered a minor error, it is a contradiction in the information provided on the listed species and could affect the integrity of Wikipedia. I therefore suggest that the information in this article (Massasauga Rattlesnake)be amended to state that the Massasauga Rattlesnake is one of only two known venomous species of snake in Michigan and Ontario. --Greywolf (talk) 17:42, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

While there may be some minor degree of toxicity to the saliva of a garter snake, they are generally considered basically non-venomous. Certainly they pose no threat to humans – being bitten by one is only a minor annoyance. As the garter snake article says in its opening line, they are "harmless", and I would object to any muddying of this article about a seriously venomous snake with a characterization of them as venomous. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:25, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Description as grey pit viper and lack of mention of a rattle

Are you kidding me?? Describing this species as a grey pit viper which is sometimes referred to as a rattlesnake really freaked me out for a while!! I was cross referencing all kinds of stuff trying to nail it down. It wasn't until I noticed an actual rattle in one of the pictures that I breathed a sigh of relief!

SOO.. How come NONE of you geniuses noticed that the descriptions of the RATTLEsnakes have completely left out any mention of the actual RATTLE??

..and you wonder why people question the validity of Wikipedia. Yeesh!!

I'm not even going to bother logging in to claim this 'rant', but could someone find an expert somewhere to do a rewrite of the descriptions? PLEASE?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 8.28.70.17 (talk) 09:26, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Anthropomorphism

Snakes are often described as "shy". This is anthropomorphism, we do not know enough about snake mindset to use terms specific to humans in describing them. Snake tactics are hit and withdraw, that is different than shy. I have observed Mass. Rat. in the wild and some of their behaviour is aggressive by normal measures. It is also often pointed out that people only run afoul of Mass. Rat. through their own fault. This undermines snake conservation as people do not want to be faulted for doing normal things that may interfere with snakes. Warnings about unsafe behaviour are one thing, but blaming the "victim" does not advance the cause of snakes.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.70.44.187 (talk) 17:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Venom

I had a reference at one point that indicated that Mass. venom was very powerful and was not only a hemotoxin. This is a detail I was trying to confirm by visiting this site. The Michigan site states it is weak, while other sites state it is potent, but that the snakes often inject little or none (ignoring the fact there are big snakes within the type). The fact that the antivenin is not always available it is an important point, as snakebite survival rates are mostly predicated on availability of treatment. The Mass. in Ontario is present in proximity to humans, like Huntsville area, but also in wilderness areas where 2 hours to treatment is not going to happen, in part due to conditions, and in part due to local hospitals not being supplied with the antivenin, and in part because one can't move around a lot after the bite.

Another important point is the maiming the bites cause which is severe with the Mass. It is nice to survive, but there can be extensive tissue damage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.70.44.187 (talk) 17:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 1 September 2015

Sistrurus catenatus → Massasauga – Per WP:COMMONNAME / WP:NCFAUNA, this well-known rattlesnake has a well-established and unambiguous common name, which is "massasauga". The suggested name is the original name of the article, which was moved in 2006 by someone who said "Scientific names should be used whenever possible to avoid confusion". That move seems contrary to the Wikipedia policy/guideline preference for the use of common names, so I suggest to revert it. A web search confirms that "massasauga" is roughly 5.8 times more common on the web than "Sistrurus catenatus" (and probably more that that if we restrict the scope to English-language sources). —BarrelProof (talk) 05:46, 1 September 2015 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 01:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)--Relisted. Tiggerjay (talk) 20:35, 20 September 2015 (UTC),

Oppose: Sistrurus catenatus is known by many names. I know it as the Massasauga rattler. As long as all of these names redirect to this page, we're good. FUNgus guy (talk) 06:48, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

If "Massasauga" is more commonly used than "Sistrurus catenatus", why shouldn't "Massasauga" be the name of the article? Wikipedia policy says to use the common name. (Please see also various other snake renaming proposals currently under discussion, as found through WP:RM.) —BarrelProof (talk) 07:06, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:FAUNA does say to use the common name if there is a consensus on the English name. That is not the case with this snake. Here is a list of common names of Sistrurus catenatus listed by their Google results:

Black snapper: 16,900,000 (mostly about the fish)

Gray rattlesnake: 1,740,000

Black rattler: 876,000

Ground rattlesnake: 836,000

Little black rattlesnake: 834,000

Triple-spotted rattlesnake: 571,000

Michigan point rattler: 372,000

Swamp rattlesnake: 365,000

Spotted rattler: 308,000

Small prairie rattlesnake: 268,000

Massasauga: 217,000 (including references to The Massasauga Provincial Park)

Kirtland's rattlesnake: 201,000

Prairie rattlesnake: 189,000

Black Massasauga: 116,000

Little grey rattlesnake: 115,000

Swamp rattler: 78,700

Muck rattler: 72,200

Massasauga rattlesnake: 68,300

Dwarf prairie rattlesnake: 64,000

Vibora de cascabel: 61,300

Sistrurus catenatus: 41,700

Prairie Massasauga: 33,400

Eastern Massasauga great adder: 18,000

Swamp Massasauga: 16,900

Massasauga rattler: 14,600

FUNgus guy (talk) 07:36, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

That's an interesting comment. But if my reading is correct, WP:FAUNA doesn't say to use an obscure Latin binominal whenever there are multiple common names. As long as we pick a name that is both sufficiently unambiguous and more common than "Sistrurus catenatus", I think it would be an improvement over the current title. The examples in WP:FAUNA seem to concern only whether a candidate common name is sufficiently unambiguous or sufficiently common. In the list above, the candidate names other than "Massasauga" generally seem either ambiguous (a "Gray rattlesnake" or "Spotted rattler" could fit many species) or insufficiently common. For ambiguous names, we need to ignore the hit counts because they include many off-topic results. Some of those names are simply more specific (e.g., obviously, "Prairie Massasauga" and "Swamp Massasauga" are simply more specific topics) or redundant (e.g., "Massasauga rattlesnake" and "Massasauga rattler"). Or non-English ("Vibora de cascabel"). I didn't know about the park – that could generate some false hits, but not very many. I think the park is not a major issue – with a Google advanced search that excludes all results that include the word "park", there are still 177,000 hits for "massasauga" (i.e., still four times more common than "Sistrurus catenatus" – even when ignoring the fact that the search for "Sistrurus catenatus" included usage in non-English sources). —BarrelProof (talk) 17:16, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, I get very different numbers than shown above. Your searches must not have been based on exact phrases. Here's the results I get from Google Advanced web search for exact phrases:

"Triple-spotted rattlesnake": 823 results

"Michigan point rattler": 9 results, one of which is Wikipedia

"Michigan point rattlesnake": 0 results

"Kirtland's rattlesnake": 790 results

"Prairie rattlesnake": 59,100 results, but they seem to mostly be for Crotalus viridis

"Vibora de cascabel": 23,300 results, but they seem to mostly be for Crotalus durissus, and they include non-English sources

"Massasauga": 177,000 results, when excluding everything that includes the word "park"

"Massasauga rattlesnake": 41,200 results

"Prairie massasauga": 1,010 results

"Sistrurus catenatus": 37,300 results, including non-English sources

etc.

"Massasauga" seems like a very clear winner here – beating "Sistrurus catenatus" by 4.7 to 1 when including non-English sources, and presumably a higher ratio in English. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:08, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

This is anecdotal of course, but having lived in Michigan my whole life I have never heard the name "Michigan Point Rattlesnake" before. It is always referred to as the Massasauga Rattlesnake or Massasauga Rattler 2602:306:CED9:41E0:A0BB:82E:412:FFDC (talk) 13:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

• Note. I closed this as no consensus, but following a request on my talk page to review that decision I've decided to undo my close and leave it for another closer to make a call on. Jenks24 (talk) 14:09, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
  • My reading of the comment by the IP above is that they concur with the notion that the most common name is some variation of "Massasauga" and that the other so-called common names that were brought up by the person who originally objected are relatively obscure (i.e., they never heard of one of them that refers to Michigan despite having lived in Michigan their entire life and being familiar with the snake). The person who originally objected never responded to my comments pointing out that their search results seemed highly flawed and that the existence of multiple so-called "common names" does not mean that the Latin name should be used (if it is relatively uncommon in use). WP:NCFAUNA (and other guidelines) say "The article title should usually consist of the common (vernacular) name that is most common in English, following WP:Article titles#Common names" (emphasis in the original). I therefore consider their objection resolved. If the preference would be for "Massasauga rattlesnake" or "Massasauga snake" rather than just "Massasauga", that would be acceptable to me as well, but my impression is that the "rattlesnake" is redundant in that phrase, so I personally prefer the more WP:CONCISE form. —BarrelProof (talk) 14:27, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Also, please note what the article itself says. (I did not write it and in fact have never edited it.) The lead paragraph says "The massasauga (Sistrurus catenatus) is a ...". Here, "massasauga" is in boldface and is listed first, and "Sistrurus catenatus" is not even in boldface. The infobox heading is "Massasauga snake". —BarrelProof (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

I retract my objection to this move, but I think it would be better to use Massasauga rattlesnake, as "massasauga" is a Chippewa word meaning "great river-mouth", and is used in other contexts (eg. The Massasauga Provincial Park). FUNgus guy (talk) 18:18, 17 September 2015 (UTC)