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.But what's more interesting is that this may be an entirely different case: a falsehood starts on Wikipedia, percolates to external sources, and then becomes true because it is pervasive. Then it remains on Wikipedia because it is true. And that's only possible because informal names can be adopted, and hey, that thing does look like an aardvark. Nick names are sticky like that.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.