I first must start saying that I regularly breed caterpillars as a hobby, and I take advantage of that to take photos of them and document their life cycles, particularly species with poorly documented biology. So at first, adding them as observations to iNat sounds like an excellent idea, but there…

Keep the original capture observation as not captive Mark the captive observations as captive. Either use the related observation field to link them or put the urls of the captive/casual obs in the comments of the original obs Any serious researcher who understands iNat isn’t going to…

[image] elpatitojuan2: Yes, but when the adult emerges I will release it back to the same spot where it was collected, so it’s going to be wild again. Organisms can change back and forth. :slightly_smiling_face: To use the Zebra example from the help page , a Zebra on the Serengeti is wild. …

-An observation taken apon collection, with the location marked at the collection site, is wild. -An observation made apon release, with the location marked at the release site, is wild. Any other observations of these animals would be marked as captive. But don’t assume these are useless, either.…

If they are wild caught in your area and eating their natural food, and you are releasing them, I would not mark as captive. On this site, Captive observations are pretty much ignored. If you are documenting life stages of a caterpillar that is not well documented, who is going to see it as casual…

[image] jciv: Captive observations are pretty much ignored. That’s exactly what I meant. They never get attention when marked as captive.

But I always mark the location where they were collected, even if they are already captive.

In fact, many of us (including me) use the ‘‘verifiable’’ filter to avoid casual observations, so if I mark an obs. as captive way less people/IDiers/Interested experts will see it. It’s just my humble opinion.

But that’s your focus (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It can’t be assumed to be everyone’s focus. Other “interested experts” may be “interested” enough that they’ve bookmarked filters with their taxon of interest & verifiable=any

Yes I know… well in fact some parasites could still get into, or the caterpillar brought home could be parasitized already. And I don’t give them too much either: just food, I mean, I don’t even close the containers at night.

right, but’s it’s still more cultivated than not.

Captive raised caterpillar observations

General

Star3 April 28, 2022, 2:24am 13

They aren’t subject to predation & other dangers they would be exposed to in the wild either. That in itself can be a pretty big level of care.

Topic		Replies	Views
Unsure how to annotate/post caterpillars that were raised to moths General question	16	524	January 10, 2025
Captive/cultivated or wild on rearing larvae etc General	38	1112	January 28, 2021
Cultivated status for bugs? General question	35	1106	April 12, 2025
Still "wild" or already "captive"? General	7	676	October 17, 2020
Seeking guidelines for hatched insect galls on plants General question	33	3092	April 9, 2021

Captive raised caterpillar observations

Related topics