Saw a https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/34156-Chondrodactylus-bibronii last night before bed, and of course had to take some photos. Unintentionally one photo was on 26 August at 11:59 pm and the next three on 27 August 12:00 am. It did not move in that time so it was in the same place, I of course moved a bit to get better angles.
Is this the same animal over time? Did I see the same animal over two days? Did I have two obs or one ob? Do I connect the obs? Do I just ignore the first photo? Since this is more a night creature, does its day not run 12pm to 11:59 am hence same day obs? Why must the poor animal stick to my clock? How sure am I my camera’s clock is accurate?
Lucky for me I only noticed this when I started cropping a few minutes ago. Imagine having to figure this out just before bed (well it could be an excuse to make another cup of coffee and enjoy some pointless thinking about life, rules and choices till 4am)…
I’d put them all in the same observation - they are all part of the same interaction with the same organism. Nature doesn’t care about time zones anyway :)
This question applies to every observation with more than one photo. Each photo will be at least a second apart, thus a different time…we don’t post them all as separate observations. Whether that one second straddles the arbitrary boundary between days is irrelevant. It’s the same observation in any case. If you see it again next week, that’s a different story.
Only some physicists, chemists, and computer scientists need to fret over a second. But a fun philosophical conundrum nonetheless. One could ask if the gecko was even there if no one was there to see it! “Esse est percipi”— “To be is to be perceived.”
Next time you’re photographing a bug at midnight, make sure it’s sitting on the border between two states as well. Then the pedants will lose their minds.
For a few seconds, it’s the same observation. I’ve observed a wasp at 16:58 on the window, then the same wasp at 8:26 the next morning dead in the sink. I called them two observations, not because they’re on different days (less than a whole day had passed), but because the wasp had died in the meantime. I’ve also observed a millipede over several hours and called it one observation.
