Talk:madra rua

Red fox?

@Angr Does this refer specifically to the red fox? Calling an arctic fox a "red dog" seems a bit weird. —CodeCat 22:36, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know, but Irish Wikipedia's article "An Íoslainn" refers to the arctic fox as "madra rua Artach". (The more common name is "sionnach Artach", however.) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

That's pretty weird, but thank you for explaining. Do you think maybe the entry should have a note to clarify this? I'm probably not the only person to wonder this. —CodeCat 15:32, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know. The dictionaries and Irish Wikipedia all treat "madra rua" as a perfect synonym of "sionnach", and none of them define "madra rua" as specifically "red fox", so I'd be reluctant to say so myself. AFAIK the red fox is the only species of fox native to Ireland, so in practice it probably does refer to the red fox 99% of the time, but I really don't know whether it has to. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:04, 16 August 2016 (UTC)