view · edit Frequently asked questions Q1:This article is not about the animal that some European speakers of English know as an Elk. Why? A1:An error was made by some explorers to North America a long time ago. They mistakenly believed that the animal they encountered was an Elch (anglized to elk), the Germanic common name for what is known in North American today as a moose. Since elk is the most commonly used name to descibe this species in its native North American range, the North American usage of the term is used in the article name. For the animal known in Europe as an elk, see moose. To further complicate matters, the Shoshone Indians and several other tribes of Native Americans referred to this species as wapiti, which is a rarely used alternative name for the animal. The key discussion that decided the title of this article is Talk:Red_deer#Name_Selection

This  level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Mammals High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mammals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mammal-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MammalsWikipedia:WikiProject MammalsTemplate:WikiProject Mammalsmammal articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Agriculture Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Agriculture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of agriculture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AgricultureWikipedia:WikiProject AgricultureTemplate:WikiProject AgricultureAgriculture articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Canada: Saskatchewan Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Canada, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Canada on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CanadaWikipedia:WikiProject CanadaTemplate:WikiProject CanadaCanada-related articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Saskatchewan. Guild of Copy Editors This article was copy edited by Twofingered Typist, a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, on 15 January 2021.Guild of Copy EditorsWikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsTemplate:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsGuild of Copy Editors articles

	Elk is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 14, 2010.
Article milestones Date Process Result May 17, 2007 Peer review Reviewed June 19, 2007 Featured article candidate Not promoted June 28, 2007 Featured article candidate Promoted
Current status: Featured article

Daily pageviews of this article A graph should have been displayed here but graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at pageviews.wmcloud.org

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

There is a request, submitted by Catfurball, for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. The rationale behind the request is: "Important".

Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

This is not true. Healthy bull elk have been killed by bears. The study (linked below) gives the record of two mature bull elk in good physical condition killed by a black bear in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Predation by Black Bear on Mature Male Elk Author(s): William J. Barmore and David Stradley Source: Journal of Mammalogy , Feb., 1971, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Feb., 1971), pp. 199-202 Published by: American Society of Mammalogists

(https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1378446.pdf?casa_token=BHpPcT7IWYwAAAAA:39T1ExhuRUEWfhd5bGdHk_ylox1iFNhjTHhb86CaQD8jpSUFaBL6_RsRVQx4ME3Kk-4Xu87NR5pd2fIxAwKL-Omg83CnkzjNVP10NBruWdeZEFhpIew)Gimly24 (talk) 14:06, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the study published in 1971 proves that they are not immune to bear predation. This former discussion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Elk/Archive_4#%22immune%22_to_bear_attacks?) was made without knowing of the article existence or that the reference given by the users did not mention the article. I would like people to read the article of 4 pages by Barmore and Stradley to correct this idea and to confirm that a revision of this section is needed on the main page. Thanks much. Gimly24 (talk) 14:21, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, the former discussion is possibly a case of misidentification of the prey species. As quoted in the study linked in the archived discussion : "Records of the Olekminsky Nature Reservation during 1988-1999 show 13 ungulate deaths from the brown bear, including 11 A. alces, one Randifer tarandus and one Cervus elaphus. Brown bear attacks on adult male elk are never successful. Even a weak male elk can resist a bear. In October 1980 a big six-year-old brown bear was found dead after crushing an exhausted five-year-old A. alces. A necropsy revealed the brown bear suffered acute abdominal trauma."

Moose are referred as "Elk" in this article, typical of the common name used for them in Europe. The sentences in bold show that they use the term "Elk" for Alces alces (Moose). Gimly24 (talk) 14:29, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In brief, there is at least one open-access article about bear predation on healthy bull elk, and to add, it take place in the exact region of the sentence. The replies I made following the first entry of this section of the talk page concerns how a misidentification of the prey species in a former discussion could have resulted in the sentence being included (by mistake) in the article page.Gimly24 (talk) 14:34, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This entry is in response to the multiple edits by 74.70.25.146 (talk) of which there are multiple issues

• 1 - change of "and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America, as well as Central and East Asia." to "one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and part of Central and East Asia.". a) the "and" after "America" has been used incorrectly here. A possible remedy would be to write "and in". There are other possibilities. But b) - "part of" begs the question what part of Asia? Also wouldn't "parts" be better? Or better still dropping "part" altogether, as the point of the sentence is not to describe the range of the Elk but to impress upon the size. The edit is worse than the original and I am reverting it.
• 2 - changed "The common name elk, used in North America, creates confusion because the larger Alces alces, which is called moose in North America, is also called elk in British English, and related names in other European languages (German Elch, Swedish älg, and French élan)" to "While the term elk is used in North America, and moose for the larger Alces alces there, “elk” is used for Alces alces in British English, and echoed in related names in other European languages (German Elch, Swedish älg, and French élan)." a) common name is the correct terminology, whilst "term" is at best imprecise and probably incorrect. b) there is improvement in the sentence structure but c) I'm not sure that dropping the reference to confusion is helpful, as it is core to explaining why the sentence is there. I disagree that this is a POV characterization. It is a description of an identified real-world problem d) "echoed" is unnecessarily English-centric. Elk is not a word of English origin. I'll make changes that are a compromise
• 3 - unexplained gap to discussion of "wapiti". This is a direct follow on from the previous sentence. I will revert
• 4 - additional wikilinking of moose further in the text. The style manual recommends that secondary articles only be wikilinked once in the primary article. So by that standard this edit should not have occurred. But I'll leave that to someone else to revert at a later date. Same for European red deer - already wikilinked earlier in the article.
• 5 - added "To help restore the animal to its original North American range and increase its numbers, " - not supported by given citation. This is likely editor speculation, and would need a citation to support it. I will remove because I don't believe such a citation is possible, largely because I don't believe that was the reason.
• 6 - unexplained removal of the reference to " in the Appalachian region of the eastern U.S". The editor is trying to make the paragraph read better, but in the process is implying that all of the following reintroductions were done for the same reason by the same people. This needs to be addressed by better rewording
• 7 - IUCN - who|What does IUCN stand for?|date=November 2022 - this is already defined and described in the article under the previous section "Distribution and status". Would help if the editor actually read the article before making amendments. I will remove the query.

I will make the above changes after the editor has had a chance to respond. Jameel the Saluki (talk) 10:00, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I realise this is an ongoing issue, and I have read about half the previous discussion before giving up for want of the time and energy required, as a result of which, I am making an observation rather than a specific suggestion as to a change.

I want to record that, as an English UK speaker, and not one ignorant about different regional uses of English, I actually thought the page had been vandalised, when, upon wanting to look up the size of Alces alces, i.e, what I refer to as "the elk," I found the numbers here ridiculous.

I did work out it was an American/English-UK usage problem, eventually! But assertions that the English will not be confused by using "elk" unqualifed for Cervus canadensis rather than Alces alces and therefore that it doesn't matter, are false.

If anyone has the stamina to read the whole debate and reopen it, then note, here is a real, actual, confused English person, to contradict any assertions to the contrary!  :-P

I wish we could have a properly separate English-UK Wikipedia, as with fully distinct languages like French and Chinese. I don't really mind the fact that a lot of articles are written with American usage because they have been originally written by Americans or are about American things, but I do mind the insistence that because English-UK speakers are in the minority, there is no need to bother accomodating us in cases of real confusion. Minorities are usually something to be cherished, and it would at least be reasonable to argue that either we should be properly included on a universal English Wiki, (which would, I would argue, mean that a common name for an animal is not truly a common name if it is used for a different animal in England), or allowed our own space in which we can translate everything to our own usage! ><

Anyway, I hope at least there is some amusement to be found in this...  :-) FloweringOctopus (talk) 10:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm unsure how much more accomadating we could be than to have a note at the top of the article, three paragraphs concerning the naming and entymology, an edit notice if you attempt to edit the article, and a FAQ explicitly about this here on the talk page. As noted in the FAQ, it was confused British people that caused this issue to begin with, so it really isn't fair to see it as an American problem. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:05, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

why not use the name wapiti to disambiguate? and make that the title of the article (i am unaware of any existing debate on this, forgive our ignorance) Lynxano (talk) 22:06, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The name Wapiti is already featured prominently on the page, and is also far more obscure than “elk”. The vast majority of Americans (not to mention the rest of the world) would not recognize Wapiti as the name of this animal, just making this problem worse for everybody, rather than a small confusion for the British. Walshy231 (talk) 17:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is incredibly typical of Americans on Wikipedia. I also agree that the page needs to be better disambiguated. Simply asserting that "elk" refers to this species, rather than specifying that it only does no in American English, is confusing and Americocentric. Unfortunately, Americans are the majority on Wikipedia and tend to be very insistent that their variety of English should be the default. This page should certainly be edited to clearly state that the word "elk" only has this meaning in American English. Dantai Amakiir (talk) 14:18, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2023 and 6 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cclay10 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Gp318, JacksonJLandry.

— Assignment last updated by Lenaerickson (talk) 02:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]