The tag alias #73946 tanuki -> raccoon_dog is pending approval.

Reason: Considering Raccoon Dog is the literal translation of Tanuki what about combining the tags? It seems the whole mythology of Kitsune got lumped into 'fox' ages ago for similar reasons.

Also I guess changing tanuki_humanoid to raccoon_dog_humanoid along with it.

Technically, if we want to get technicnal about it, tanuki refers to the Japanese raccoon dog and not the common raccoon dog living on mainland Asia. However, technicalities aside, the likelihood of us telling the difference between the two species is negligible.

This alias doesn't seem practical unless chinese raccoon dog and its implication change.

This is a case where it goes back and forth depending on who's currently ahead in the lumpers vs splitters eternal taxonomy war. Visually there isn't much difference, especially once stylization and custom markings are taken into account.
Considering that raccoon_dog -tanuki contains many of the same characters the tags seem to be used interchangeably.

lafcadio said:
This alias doesn't seem practical unless chinese raccoon dog and its implication change.

What would need to change? It implies 'raccoon_dog' and this wouldn't impact that at all. It (and the other unused subspecies) could be safely aliased into 'raccoon_dog' without issue anyway.

why are there so many meh votes here? this seems like a really obvious "no".

why would we alias a species directly to its genus? this'd be like aliasing red_fox to true_fox.

I'm fine with how the tag relationships are currently, where tanuki implicates raccoon_dog. I could see the point to making it an alias though. A lot of people seem to use the term "tanuki" as a shorter term for any "raccoon-dog", regardless of specific species.
Could also reserve the tanuki tag for pieces that fit with depictions from Japanese mythology (bake-danuki, and its many interpretations in modern media), but that might be a little too subjective.

sightglass said:
Could also reserve the tanuki tag for pieces that fit with depictions from Japanese mythology (bake-danuki, and its many interpretations in modern media), but that might be a little too subjective.

TBH that would be a nightmare to maintain considering the sheer number of people who think that tanuki is the generic term for all raccoon dogs, and are not aware that the animal species has an official english name.

rupikonna said:
TBH that would be a nightmare to maintain considering the sheer number of people who think that tanuki is the generic term for all raccoon dogs, and are not aware that the animal species has an official english name.

To be fair, they're not incorrect. Tanuki is as much an official english name as raccoon dog, along with other terms like Finn Raccoon, murmansky, and old terms like mangut. Pre-Columbian people who spoke european languages, including english, probably were using loan words since raccoons were unknown to them. Finn raccoon and tanuki are both pretty common in fur/fashion because the idea of wearing 'dog' is distasteful in english speaking countries.