Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2023 October 26

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October 26

Trying to find a good diagram to the somatic and autonomic innervation of mammalian tails (like the cat or monkey)

Frustratingly when I attempt to look this up, I keep getting diagrams which only include the human lumbosacral plexus and coccygeal nerves, which is quite frustrating when I’m trying to understand homology between species (as a researcher), momentarily escape studying human anatomy (as a first year med student), and understand the tail behaviors of my cat (as a human). Can any anatomical experts help me out?

Does the parasympathetic outflow extend to the tail? How does the cauda equina manifest in cats or monkeys, as far as their continuation into the tail? Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 00:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm finding a lot of images of various animals on the veteriankey.com website. Abductive (reasoning) 07:12, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I looked for a diagram of the neurovascular aspects of the tail and could not find one. What nerves and arteries supply the tail? Why is this information missing from Wikipedia? Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 11:09, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Forestry/logging: Symbol ł in "Age 1500ł years"

Hello. While trying to bail Irmulco, California out of non-notable deletion jail, I found an old logging photo that included "Age 1500ł years" in the caption. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what the symbol ł might be mean in this context -- I suppose it's something like "estimated based on tree rings" but I can't find anything that clearly says so. Help? TIA jengod (talk) 19:31, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I auggest it doesn't mean anything. I did a Google search on "ł years" (with the quotes, i.e. exact phrase search). I found several hits where the "ł" that Google found wasn't really a "ł" at all, but some other character: in one case it was a right-pointing arrow, in another case an italic t, in another case an area where the type was blurred and didn't scan correctly. I also found a number of hits where I could not access the text where the word "years" occurred, so my conclusion has to be considered speculative, but I strongly suspect that this caption is another case where the type was blurred and didn't scan correctly.

The image description page gives the source of this caption as the University of California Berkeley library, so it might be worthwhile contacting them via the link provided, and asking if they can check the original text they're quoting from. --142.112.221.156 (talk) 04:17, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I had much the same result and came to a similar conclusion but wasn't sure if there might a secret forestry code I didn't know. Thank you so much for investigating 142.112.222.156 -- ya done good work! jengod (talk) 05:58, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Probably a "+". Clarityfiend (talk) 10:37, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Clever you. I have boldly converted it to a + (thanks for your good thinking). jengod (talk) 16:52, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Oof! Well done! I wish I'd thought of that. --142.112.221.156 (talk) 04:50, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

• Link to a footnote on a page you can no longer see? Andy Dingley (talk) 10:50, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Wait what? jengod (talk) 16:52, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

When I go to that resource listing in our libary reference database, it says "Redwood stump #1560. South of Scotia. 14' diameter, about 1500 years old...", which does not have the l-bar. It may be because it is Unicode and you can see that this old system doesn't even turn ' into a single quote character properly. But notice the wording difference. It is the same reference item from Berkeley libary, but the listing I see begins with "about 1500", but the reference used for the article begins with "Age 1500". 97.82.165.112 (talk) 17:37, 30 October 2023 (UTC)