Talk:Blesmol

Untitled

In response to: [1] [2] - In 2006 there was an understanding that Coetomys is unavailable as a resurrected taxon for the genus split in mole rats, being a junior synonym of Cryptomys. I am editing the wikipedia page for blesmols to reflect the proposed Fukomys genus since it is the only acceptable proposed genus at this time. C. amatus, C. holosericeus, and C. anomalus currently have no English names. --EllisD 02:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Do mole rats navigate using the earth's magnetic field?

According to today's "Did you know..." on the Main Page and Homing (biology), mole rats use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation. Is this true? If so, it's a very interesting fact and should be mentioned.--Hamster128 (talk) 15:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Ridiculous title and nomenclature

The ignorant and harmful convention of forcing the name of practically any article on a biological taxon to be a "common name" has made a mess of this article. For one thing, the name "blesmol" is only Afrikaans and only applies to one to three species at most; the general Afrikaans term is "tandmol" (literally "tooth mole": all species in the family have consistently exposed incisors) and in English "mole rat" (hyphenated or catenated according to taste). "Blesmol" is used (fairly logically, as common names go) as being correctly descriptive of Georychus, and sometimes Bathyergus, which latter however are generally called "duinmolle". To call all the species "blesmolle" (the suffix "-le" denotes the plural) is about as natural and helpful as calling all Equids "striped zebras" whether they are striped or not, or whether they are zebras or not. Similarly, "bles", depending on context means "blaze" as in the white patch on the face of a "blesbok" (the term is not used for Damaliscus in general) or the blaze of a horse; it simply does not apply to animals without blazes. "Bles" can however also mean "bald patch on the head" as in human heads or coots ("bleshoenders"), but that is not applicable to any mole rat species. Only Georychus consistently have anything like a bles.

The article also contains some inaccuracies and other flaws. I am inclined to rewrite it as an article on Bathyergidae (with links to Heterocephalidae etc) and then replace this article plus "Tandmol", "Duinmol", "Grysmol" etc with redirections or disambiguations. This "blesmol" misnomer in a WP article is harmful to our reputation and already shows signs of influencing usage on the WWW, so to leave it as it stands is irresponsible.

If anyone either objects or wishes to participate or even take over the exercise, please contact me as soon as convenient; basically before I get too deeply into the project. JonRichfield (talk) 10:33, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

are they rats?

It's not clear to me whether these are technically rats (or even moles). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:BC65:55B9:48C1:B0E8:8025:EE4B (talk) 08:25, 24 May 2022 (UTC)