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hear, hear! IMO 'shrew' is used in English far more often with this meaning in mind than with regard to the biological species. --Marlow4 21:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC) hello
Latest comment: 14 years ago15 comments10 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
No argument from me there. Even in a dictionary, it's likely to be the primary meaning; when searching for information in an encyclopedia, it seems obvious that this is overwhelmingly likely to be most commonly intended meaning. Anaxial (talk) 15:38, 28 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Oppose; My position is summed up by a comment on the disambiguation talk page: "Shrew" shoud be for the animal."Shrew is a name used for several animals; the average reader doesn't know this; and I'm not comfortable asking them to read their way into an article in order to figure it out. Since the main meanings of the term "Shrew" are so easily confused, a disambiguation page is best. Move to Shrew (Soricidae)orSoricidae.Hesperian06:30, 29 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
The other groups are never called "shrew". They are called "tree shrew", "elephant shrew", and in the case of Nesophontes, usually just Nesophontes. I highly doubt that anyone would search for "shrew" when meaning these animals. Ucucha11:10, 29 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree. I can't envision anyone looking for elephant shrews, tree shrews, or otter shrews under just plain "shrew". The same goes for Nesophontes which is only rarely referred to as Puerto Rican shrew, West Indian shrew, or something along those lines. I think there should be quick reference to other animals with shrew in their names in the shrew article, but I really don't envision people making that mistake. These animals should be on the disambiguation page, though. --Aranae (talk) 13:20, 29 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Let's not forget the other shrews, both of which are more likely to be the primary topic. Google web: shrew taming 9 million; shrew woman 1 million; shrew Soricidae 100,000. Google books: shrew taming 6,300; shrew woman 4,500; shrew Soricidae 797. Here is an etymology of shrew, which is very complicated; perhaps there should be a Wikipedia article on the word itself: Shrew (word). --Una Smith (talk) 14:27, 29 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
I am not inclined to trust a 19th-century etymology much more than I would trust a 19th-century taxonomy. As it appears in more recent sources, "shrew" apparently did originally mean "soricid", though its pre-Old English etymology is unclear. Also, I believe your Google results are deflated by using "Soricidae", which is unlikely to occur in non-technical mentionings of shrews. "Shrew mammal" yields far more results.
But neither etymology nor Google results come to the heart of the question. What I think we should be considering is what people who search for "shrew" in Wikipedia are going to be looking for and how similar situations are handled in other Wikipedia articles. Then we see that articles like rat, donkey, or hawk also have the biological meaning as the primary topic. Furthermore, usage of "shrew" for a particular kind of woman (and occasionally man) is very closely associated with Shakespeare's play, and I highly doubt that there will be many people who will search for it on Wikipedia. If there are, there is always the hat. Finally, Wikipedia is of course not a dictionary, and shrew as a term for a person is not a very encyclopedic topic, as illustrated by the fact that there is still no article on it. Ucucha19:24, 29 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Support, or create a primary topic redirect to Soricidae with a redirect hatnote for Shrew (disambiguation). The Shakespearean usage of the word is not a topic within the scope of the encyclopedia (perhaps Wiktionary), and "shrew" alone is usually used to refer to this family, not the others. Dekimasuよ!23:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
That's unlikely to be true for all shrews, though--there's 400 species of them, some quite specialized. It would be nice if we had some studies that specifically mention that they measured this in some species and found 1200 per minute figure. Ucucha02:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
And now that we're talking here anyway - "shrew mouse" does seem to be an occasional synonym for "shrew" ([1350%3AEITSMM2.3.CO%3B2], for example), but it can also refer to various rodents (not only Pseudohydromys, but also Archboldomys, Microhydromys, Coelomys (subgenus of Mus), and Blarinomys, and possibly others). We should have a disambiguation page, which I'll create. "Mouse shrew", on the other hand, generally refers to Myosorex species. Ucucha03:06, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
That's a good idea, the disambiguation page for shrew-mouse/mouse shrew. I noticed that New Guinea is one of the only shrewless places, and the only place you can find shrew-mice. I'm noticing that there are many results for "fastest metabolism shrew". I'll try to cherry-pick some citable ones, but I'd like to say now that it seems to be a very commonly cited fact in discussions of longevity, and is often tied to mention of their short life spans, which are called among the shortest of all mammals. Chrisrus (talk) 03:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This article stayui
tes shrews are not rodents, but are closely more related to voles. The article on voles states voles are themselves rodents. It doesn't make sense. I think most people identify mice, moles, voles, and shrews, along with other animals, as rodents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.181.43.152 (talk) 00:55, 8 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I think this particular image of the (seemingly still alive but severely injured) trapped shrew normalizes killing those animals in this fashion, and it also seems to look as though it was not painful, in this particular picture. I think it is necessary to comment on what exactly is happening in this picture, in the caption. The entry on traps should be linked to.
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