Talk:crabeater

RFV discussion: January–February 2018

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crabeater

Rfv-sense blackbanded darter

Tagged but not listed Kiwima (talk) 06:40, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Added by me from Webster 1913: their taxonomic designation was Hadropterus nigrofasciatus but somebody has modernised it. Equinox ◑ 06:47, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't find crabeater or crab-eater collocated with either Hadropterus or Percina at Google Books, Google Scholar, or Google News. On the web, I find us and those who copy from us. DCDuring (talk) 17:33, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Hadropterus is now a subgenus of Percina, so the "modernization" is correct. DCDuring (talk) 17:35, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that "modernised" wasn't a sneer; I was just pointing out the edit in case it would help in verifying this. I know nothing about the actual fish. Equinox ◑ 20:26, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Given that a common name in at least one source is the alphabetically-close crawl-a-bottom, I wonder if there was some kind of crossover in the original book or in the Project Gutenberg version that was the source of the online texts. There's no logical reason to call Percina nigrofasciata a "crabeater", since it's too small to eat a crab even if it were to find one in its freshwater habitat. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:43, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Fishbase, which has a lot of common names, only ascribes crabeater to Rachycentron canadum (cobia) and has no fish with the name crawl-a-bottom. DARE has crawl-a-bottom ascribed to Hypentelium nigricans (northern hogsucker) and the synonymous Catostomus nigricans and crabeater only to cobia.

I find vernacular names are maddening, because so many are not attestable in all the senses reported in sources like Fishbase. DCDuring (talk) 22:50, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I also find it annoying that there are apparently no scans of Webster 1913 available online. A work as huge as the Gutenberg version is bound to have at least a few typos and other human errors in it, but there's no way to check against the original unless you have access to a dead-tree copy. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:15, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I think there is a salutary lesson to be learned from Chuck considering whether the "crab-eater" is big enough to eat a crab. For me the words are quite often divorced from reality (that's why I spend my entire life on Wiktionary). Let us appreciate our biologists. Equinox ◑ 23:36, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I take it you've never encountered crabs, ie, the crab louse or pubic louse (Pthirus pubis), which is certainly small enough for P. nigricans. There are a lot of small decapods. One that was an inch long would be small enough to be subdued and eaten by the fish and large enough to be noticed by humans. DCDuring (talk) 23:50, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Those aren't known to frequent the habitats of Percina nigrofasciata (AFAIK), though the lice can be found in the text of unabridged dictionaries- even in those more straight-laced times. I did find a sense for Percina nigrofasciata under crabeater in the 1907 edition, with crawl-a-bottom nowhere on the same page, so we'll have to discard that theory. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:39, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

LOL, I'm glad to admit I haven't encountered the pubic louse. Equinox ◑ 00:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I spend some time trying to get images that help associate organisms with the vernacular or taxonomic names. Today it was dodecandrian/Dodecandria. DCDuring (talk) 23:43, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't think Chuck's consideration of size is conclusive, given that the crabeater seal is called crabeater because it eats krill. Kiwima (talk) 02:56, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 04:23, 7 February 2018 (UTC)