Alligators aren't crocodiles, just like humans aren't chimpanzees.
Posted under General
Yes alligators and crocodiles are part of the same order (Crocodylia).
They are also distinct at the family level.
Since virtually everyone when talking about crocodiles is not referring to them at the order level but the family level having either an alias or implication would be confusing.
It doesn't matter whether they're taxonomically distinct or not, what matters is whether they're visually distinct -- bearing in mind that artists may not know or care what the differences are, and may draw them ambiguously or inaccurately. It can be a bit difficult to apply a guide like the one Kikimaru linked to cartoons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodylia
So, crocodilian as umbrella term?
mock said:
It doesn't matter whether they're taxonomically distinct or not, what matters is whether they're visually distinct -- bearing in mind that artists may not know or care what the differences are, and may draw them ambiguously or inaccurately. It can be a bit difficult to apply a guide like the one Kikimaru linked to cartoons.
post #79527 would be a specific representation of what we generally assume to be a crocodile.
post #1280333 for alligator.
There are a lot that are sorta "in the middle".
dean_exia said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodylia
So, crocodilian as umbrella term?
Might be worth it since there are overall not a ton of images and name itself would make people check the wiki.
Updated
mock said:
It doesn't matter whether they're taxonomically distinct or not, what matters is whether they're visually distinct -- bearing in mind that artists may not know or care what the differences are, and may draw them ambiguously or inaccurately. It can be a bit difficult to apply a guide like the one Kikimaru linked to cartoons.
I can't tell an Uzi from a MAC-10.
They should both just alias to machine pistol.
They're not distinct enough visually, people don't know how to tell them apart, and I submit that 99% of depictions we have here are of neither, because the artists just drew something that looks good and is green and teethy.
The page linked lists 4 telltale signs. Out of that, #4 (check location) is right out and unusable. That leaves three characteristics.
For post #79527, which is supposedly archetypical crocodile:
1) Narrow snout -- it's fairly long, but the angle makes it difficult to judge the width. And "long and narrow snout" doesn't even hold for all crocodiles, compare this Wikipedia image for example.
2) Interlocking teeth with upper and lower jaw of the same width -- nope. It's not really terribly clear either way, but if anything, the teeth seem to be at roughly the same position (so they wouldn't interlock with closed jaw), and the upper jaw appears slightly wider. Which'd point to an alligator according to the guidelines.
3) Olive colouration -- more or less, but again, there's no fast rule here. "Both species of alligator also tend to be darker in color than crocodiles—often nearly black—but color is very dependent on water quality. Algae-laden waters produce greener skin, while tannic acid from overhanging trees can often produce darker skin."
Overall, I guess the long snout rather pegs this particular post as a crocodile, but there are many crocodile species with much shorter snouts, and it has traits/inaccuraces/details which are alligator-like.
1) The snouts are clearly shorter, but they also taper quite a bit and form V much more than a U. Very similar to the Wikipedia image of a crocodile I linked above, IMHO.
2) Mostly no teeth visible, but the jaws fit neatly with no difference in width, and the left one at the bottom has markings along its jaw which could be the teeth protruding up and down. Ergo a crocodile.
3) The colour is very difficult to judge. But it's pale and much closer to the rightmost one in this picture (which is a crocodile), rather than the middle (an alligator) or the leftmost (which is neither, it's a gharial)
So 2.5 out of three characteristics point to a crocodile, as does the fact the girl is wearing crocs, making it a pun/reference.
All in all, the supposedly clearest examples of the distinction are murky as hell, and prove that the distinction cannot be usefully maintained. It has nothing to do with whether these two are distinct families biologically, as some claim. Danbooru is not a collection of biology-related photographs, but a collection of anime-related drawings, and what we get is not appropriate for such fine-grained distinction. What we should do is to alias both to a single tag, whether it's alligator, crocodile or crocodilian. And then if we ever get pictures of super-distinctive species like the gharial, we can implicate that to the resulting tag.
葉月 said:
They're not distinct enough visually, people don't know how to tell them apart, and I submit that 99% of depictions we have here are of neither,...
Based on mock's explanations in this thread, forum #73384, and your statement, should we alias raven -> crow? Corvids are informally known as the crow family but some species like magpie and jays have distinctive traits. Plus, Hillside Moose noted that crows and ravens are different though we cannot tell them apart in some drawings.
What we should do is to alias both to a single tag, whether it's alligator, crocodile or crocodilian. And then if we ever get pictures of super-distinctive species like the gharial, we can implicate that to the resulting tag.
I prefer crocodilian as a catchall term, implicating crocodiles, alligators and gharials.
If anything shows willful ignorance, it's pretending that what we tag has anything to do with actual crocodiles/alligators, when in fact almost all depictions are neither and just depict big, green, teethy reptiles. Maintaining implications introduces confusion for negligible gain, since almost none of our pictures will qualify for anything other than the generic implied tag. And what tiny benefits you might have, you will instantly lose to the fact that people don't know the differences and couldn't distinguish them even if the pictures were detailed enough to allow that, so some will type crocodile, whilst others will use alligator because that's the first thing that came to mind, and certainly won't know that we actually have a scientifically accurate umbrella which they should apply instead.
dean_exia said:
Based on mock's explanations in this thread, forum #73384, and your statement, should we alias raven -> crow?
I'd say so. Although raven is currently a character (for better or worse), whereas the crow page states "animals that form the genus Corvus in the family Corvidae" and then goes on to include ravens as well, so in practice they're already treated as the same. Magpies are easily visually distinguishable, so there's no confusion, but for species where you need a dissection to accurately judge the morphology, maintaining the distinction is not practical.
Edit: so it turns out we have raven_(animal). That's backwards, IMHO, and it should be the character that gets qualifiers. And ravens the animals should alias to crow. The knowledge of genetic variation between raven populations is certainly an interesting titbit, but it has absolutely no bearing on our tagging, which is all that matters.
葉月 said:
What we should do is to alias both to a single tag, whether it's alligator, crocodile or crocodilian. And then if we ever get pictures of super-distinctive species like the gharial, we can implicate that to the resulting tag.
dean_exia said:
I prefer crocodilian as a catchall term, implicating crocodiles, alligators and gharials.
As above I agree that crocodilian is the best middle ground.
+1 for crocodilian as well.
I don't really like either of these solutions, as Hazuki states, a depiction of an animal may be vague and ambiguous enough to not be positively identifiable as either an alligator or a crocodile, which would make tagging as either somewhat suspect, and an alias make sense. On the other hand if drawn with some care, crocodiles are quite visually distinct as having narrower, pointier snouts. We aren't a zoological image board, but aliasing the two ignores the apparent differences and feels as wrong as aliasing pigeon to sparrow would. Likewise, given any sort of size reference ravens are quite differentiable from crows despite their similarity. Another similar argument: we don't alias bass_guitar to electric_guitar despite the only visual difference being the number of strings (something many users are apparently unaware of based on the number of mistaggings. User ignorance shouldn't be a valid argument in favor of white-washing differences.
On the other hand crocodilian feels like a forced and unneccessary umbrella tag. Until we get a fully functional tag ontology (which we likely won't), and the ability to hide umbrella tags people will likely never search for, it feels wrong to try to force our own fully flushed out taxonomic nomenclature. These sorts of things also always cause problems with variations on themes. Are stuffed-animal alligators crocodilian? What about an anthropomorphized crocodile?
Given a choice between the two, I'd vote for implicating towards the latter, as it's the most easily reverted; aliases can do a lot of damage. I'd still say both solutions feel inappropriate.
On raven_(animal): this is definitely backwards. Characters should always cede the term to the general noun and be qualified with their series.
Updated
Shinjidude said:
On raven_(animal): this is definitely backwards. Characters should always cede the term to the general noun and be qualified with their series.
I just moved the TOV char to raven (tales of vesperia). Raven can now be used for the bird.
