How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark
The article claims this is an example of a falsehood starting on Wikipedia, percolating to external sources, then perpetuating on Wikipedia because it's in those external sources. That's interesting.<p>But what's <i>more</i> interesting is that this may be an entirely different case: a falsehood starts on Wikipedia, percolates to external sources, and then <i>becomes true because it is pervasive</i>. Then it remains on Wikipedia because it <i>is</i> true. And that's only possible because informal names can be adopted, and hey, that thing <i>does</i> look like an aardvark. Nick names are sticky like that.<p>Of course, I don't know if this is the case. But I don't think this article acknowledges it as a possibility - and nor do I know enough about the informal names of this kind of raccoon.