This is a bit strange but did you ever see an observation and think, “this is familiar” but when you check the data, it is a species you’ve not heard of or someone tells you it is undescribed?
Don’t think I have ever been ‘familiar’ with an undescribed species.
Well… It depends. I mean, for species that can’t be visually distingiushed I’d say they triggar a familarity in terms of “I know this is the unknown one” but I have never seen something in real life that ended up being undescribed even though I thought I saw it on inat.
But it’s quite possible that you saw whatever you saw before, maybe just not yet identified as what is really is. (I mean: Maybe you saw it at family level and now you saw an unidentified species and remember an old photo?)
I thik you need to explain this a little more.
I randomly found another identifier in my state while looking at lichens. I went looking in their observations, and I found a photo that I was just absolutely sure I had taken. Well, as it turns out, we BOTH took a photo of the same lichen in a nook on a random part of a trail months apart at the exact same angle, at the same focal length too. Well, something was glitching with the site, and the photo wasn’t showing up in the right part of the map, so I looked like a total asshole accusing them of stealing my photo. I mean, it was truly uncanny, and with Ai now, I was just so unsure. I should not have jumped to conclusions. I ended up apologizing and felt super terrible. We both got the picture before Ai was even a thing so… just best think things through and not on half a bottle of wine!
I still find it funny we were in the exact same spot taking a picture of the same lichen 6 months apart, and only because I was bumbling around on her observations, I found it. The odds are a bajillion to one on that.
Anyways, forgiveness was given, we are both lichenizing and still learning from each other in the ether.
I thought I knew the species and wasted so much time…
For better or worse the opposite tends to happen to me. “Wow, that’s an awesome bug. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before!” I look it up and it turns out I saw it 4 years ago (usually same time of year ± 1 week) in the same spot.