Talk:Porpoise

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Cetaceans
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The photo is very bad, as though someone just had to see the picture they took off the side of the cruise ship on Wikipedia. I think the article would be improved with a standard diver-shot of porpoises.

  • I've only seen two porpoise images on Wikipedia: a drawing and a photograph that is not of the best quality. More porpoise images, including photographs, size comparisons, and perhaps a diagram showing the differences between dolphins and porpoises would be greatly appreciated. --Gray PorpoisePhocoenidae, not Delphinidae 00:15, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
    • To be fair it's incredibly difficult to photograph porpoises. Compared with dolphins they are incredibly shy of people and boats and don't play in the surface of the water so much. Pishmishy 11:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Porpoises and dolphins

I have removed the recently added paragraph that said

"The critical distinction between porpoises and dolphins, is that porpoises tend to be more talkative and relaxed in social situations whereas dolphins have a tendency towards shyness."

Knowing little about the topic, I'm quite sure however that this is not the critical distinction. I first thought about changing that into simply "a distinction"; however, the whole sentence sounds quite awkward to me ("talkative"? "relaxed"? "shyness"? Are these terms any scholar would use?), so I decided for moving it to the talk page.

LjL 5 July 2005 23:18 (UTC)

[edit] Habitat?

A section detailing the areas of the world where different types of porpoises live would be most helpful.

It would also be nice to see something about porpoises portrayed in TV, movies, books, music, etc. (I'm listening to the Monkees' "Porpoise Song" right now, which is the only reason I'm thinking about it."

[edit] taxonomy section is a confusing distraction

It took me several minutes to realize that the Taxonomy section shows a superset of the Porpoise family. In other words, that section is about half un-related to the main topic. I don't know much about whales, so maybe someone who does could change the section to be clearer. --Markhu 21:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Boy, I agree, but it looks like this pattern is followed in some cases (cf. Delphinidae) but not others (River dolphin). I'm going to pose this question at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans and see what comes up. --Grahamtalk/mail/e 06:42, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Erm.. there is a bit of vandalism on this page.

[edit] Wieght

I am doing a school research project on marine wildlife and noticed a lack of what a porpise's wieght is. It should be added.

There isnt any data on the porpoise page as the six species of porpoise vary in weight by quite a lot, have a look at the separate species pages for weight information. chris_huh 10:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)