Talk:Mugger crocodile

Eating

Muggers are pure fish eaters. they do not prey on anythin larger than themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.95.14.232 (talk) 19:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

This is wrong...although their diet does primarily consist of fish, they do indeed take much larger prey on occasion, including cattle in rare instances. They are also responsible for many attacks (some of the fatal) on humans within the Indian subcontinent every year, although these attacks are not usually predatory in nature (i.e. the victims are not eaten.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.55.240.208 (talk) 06:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Move to Muggar crocodile

Have undone the move to "Muggar crocodile" which does not seem to have been discussed. Shyamal (talk) 01:45, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

why was the picture i uploaded moved ?

the picture of a mugger crocodile

which i recently uploaded was removed from the article Marsh Crocodileand when i checked for a reason the only explanation was a (rvt: was good, WP:NOTBROKEN) tag.the image was replaced with one which I believe is a less suitable replacement .I would like to know if i made a mistake in uploading the image or some other mistake,Im am new to wikepedia and have uploaded several image and i would like to avoid this happening again so please inform me why it was removed.--Jamaican college grad (talk) 23:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC)jamaican college grad

Here the crocodile is hard to discern on the grass background, especially in a downsized thumbnail. A side note: the file name is 2006-kabini-croc.jpg, but its description says the date is 16 September 2012. Could you please rectify this? Materialscientist (talk) 23:46, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Etymology

I will delete some creative etymology in the lead. It is unreferenced, and contradicts a more likely derivation in the body of the article which has citations. Given the etymology in the body, the title of this article, "Mugger crocodile," seems kind of doubled up. I think "Mugger (crocodile)" might be more appropriate. I have two old encyclopedia articles which just refer to it by this name (mugger). Bob Burkhardt (talk) 21:48, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Apart from?

I suspect that where the article says "apart from" it actually means "together with".

Update distribution in Gujarat

For the Distribution and Habitat section, in the line item for Gujarat, I'd like to request the addition of Kutch as follows: - Gujarat along the Vishwamitri River[28] and in several reservoirs and lakes in Kutch. Daxpandhi (talk) 16:42, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I read the article in Herpetology Notes, but it remains unclear whether the authors recorded muggers, e.g. with photographic evidence in particular lakes, or whether their accounts are merely based on literature review. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 19:45, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

If you need a reference for photographic verification, the CSG UAS Workshop shows videos from Kutch on their website (Item 3.6 in the agenda). For additional verification, the same author (Raju Vyas) of the first paper above, mentions Kutch in this CSG newsletter article (Page 15-16) re: roadkill, where we also provided photographic confirmation. The DesertCrocs project page above (as well as the gallery page on that site) also shows photographic evidence of muggers in Kutch.

 Done. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 14:03, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

References

Karyotype based phenetic classification

I think the karyotype based cladogram should go, it is not only a rather outdated approach but based on my reading they use a molecular phylogeny tree and identify conflicts with their own karyotype similarity analysis. Considering that karyotype is not known for its reliability, I think the two trees are not really comparable. Is is not really a phylogenetic tree based on karyotype. Shyamal (talk) 08:21, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Since this is published in a peer-reviewed journal, I consider this a reliable source and therefore included it here, also because it is not our task as editors to evaluate the validity or reliability of methods. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 08:51, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Ok, on further reading it seems that right tree is actually a concatenated mix of nuclear and mitochondrial genes while the left tree is based on mitochondrial genes only and only the textual annotations note karyotypic features. Very iffy, trees will certainly vary with choice of genes. As editors we should certainly be careful about examining citations and commentaries on these. Not all peer-review is equal. Sample sizes matter. The phylogeny in the Oak paper is actually a better source to go with. Also this one - https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/191/4/1075/5868621 Shyamal (talk) 09:29, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Oaks's cladogram does not differ from that of Meredith et al. (2011), so I added this ref. I can't access the full article by Tao Pan et al. (2021), and unless you have this and can send it, I'll include it when it becomes available for download somewhere. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 13:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

@BhagyaMani: You can always try sci-hub - the bot via Telegram works very efficiently. Shyamal (talk) 16:06, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a ton, Shyamal !! Got it via sci-hub.do, super!! -- BhagyaMani (talk) 16:18, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Their time-calibrated cladogram of Crocodylus does not differ significantly from the one by Oaks (2011) and Meredith et al. (2011), but their estimates re node ages do by a couple of million years. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 16:36, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, there is no issue with the phylogenetic tree on the left. It is the tree on the right, which is based on Oak but used in that paper only to show some conflicts shown by karyotype morphology (even the original caption does not claim that it is a phylogeny), it was not placed there to challenge the evolutionary hypothesis of Oak. Given so much consensus, the article should only give due weightage to that and have just one tree. Shyamal (talk) 05:09, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Updates to Phylogeny and Evolution based on recent studies

Just a head's up, since I noticed this recent discussion - I updated the Phylogeny section with information from more recent studies. The Australasia origin of crocodiles has since been rejected in favor of an African origin. And I added a new cladogram based on more recent phylogenetic studies. Cougroyalty (talk) 21:51, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

References

Thanks for adding this. But why did you remove content? I think, we should not discard and withhold info from older studies in favor of only the latest, but provide a broad spectrum of content to show that croc evolution is ambiguous. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 12:47, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Understood. It's just that as more studies are done and crocodile knowledge continues to expand based on new evidence, the older studies become outdated, making the newer studies preferable.

In regards to the Australasia origins - you are citing the 2011 Oaks study for this claim. However, the 2021 Hekkala et al. study specifically rejects this claim and this 2011 Oaks study by name, in light of new DNA evidence from Voay. It is confusing to the reader for this article to state "the genus Crocodylus most likely originated in Australasia" followed several sentences later with "Crocodylus likely originated in Africa and radiated towards Southeast Asia and the Americas." Which is why I originally stated "Crocodylus likely originated in Africa and radiated outwards towards Southeast Asia and the Americas, although an Australia/Asia origin has also been considered." I wanted the leading theory to be clear to the reader, but I was willing to also address the alternative lesser-supported thoery.

Now in regards to the cladograms. Your cladogram on the left cites the 2011 Oaks study, later revised by the 2021 Hekkala et al. study. It also cites another 2011 study by Meredith, Hekkala, Amato & Gatesy. These 4 authors are all co-authors of the 2021 Hekkala et al. study, so they are clearly endorsing this more recent study over the older study. Furthermore, your cladogram on the left is currently not showing the Mugger crocodile. Perhaps an omission? I see no reason to keep this left cladogram, in light of the new 2021 cladogram. And the cladogram on the right (based on a 2015 study) isn't actually substantially different from the 2021 cladogram. Just a few minor differences. And it doesn't include as many crocodile species... I think the right cladogram from 2015 can go, to be replaced by the new 2021 cladogram, but it does seem to have a bit more value than the cladogram on the left. Cougroyalty (talk) 15:44, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Hey @BhagyaMani:, you continue to edit the article, yet you haven't responded to me here on the talk page. I'd like to hear your reasoning for why you want to keep the older outdated information that is contradictory to the more recent studies. I'm just trying to follow the WP:BRD policy. Cheers! Cougroyalty (talk) 14:19, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

See my comment above .. we should not discard and withhold info from older studies in favor of only the latest, .. BhagyaMani (talk) 15:17, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. On my re-reading the 2021 Hekkala et al. study, while supporting the Africa origin, it does leave open the possibility of the Australasia origin. Perhaps if scientific consensus is reached later down the line, then a revision might make sense, but I'll concede that it appears we are not at scientific consensus right now. Thanks. Cougroyalty (talk) 15:55, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Name Mugger

Mugger doesn't mean water monster at all, the word Mugger has come from the word Makara(which means a type of sea creature, Capricorn to be more precise) and Mugger crocodile is known as Mugger-machh which translates to- 'Capricorn like sea creature' I know Capricorn to Western eyes will seem really different but Makara means/is a counterpart to Capricorn both in Hindi and Sanskrit from which the word is borrowed. 2405:201:2026:1835:49D4:8C98:13DA:8746 (talk) 13:35, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what part of the article you are disagreeing with, since the article currently agrees with what you are saying. No where in the article does it state "water monster". Cougroyalty (talk) 16:24, 10 October 2022 (UTC)