See title. I’ve seen a lot of museum specimens marked as captive and I personally don’t think they should be – after all, we likely cannot tell if they were captured from the wild (and fish/bushmeat is often marked as wild, so why couldn’t a museum specimen caught in the wild?), and I personally fin…

A museum specimen, e.g., a pinned insect, herbarium sheet, is not captive. As per the guidelines: “your museum/herbarium specimens that are appropriately marked with date and location of original collection [are wild]”. Please do not mark observations such as these as captive

Museum specimens should definitely not be marked as captive unless they genuinely represent collections of eg zoo animals. Countervote any captive votes and/or tag others to help if more than 1 vote present

They’re absolutely captive. They are where humans intend them to be.

They should be casual unless the location and date are accurate to where and when they were collected, but captive is not the right DQA route to take.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/137427699 in case anyone wants an example. Date and location correspond to where the wasp was collected alive, although all pictures are from museum under microscope.

I think museum specimens CAN be wild, if the location and date where they were collected is reported (and if they were alive at the time, not fossils). If the location and date are where/when the organism was observed in the museum, it must be considered casual, probably captive/cultivated.

If it’s not your collection you personally gathered, it’s captive. If you post correct date and you saw it alive in the wild, it’s wild. [image] owlshead-wren: My personal policy has been to select “date is inaccurate” and “location is inaccurate” as unless the specimen is marked with the date…

marina_gorbunovaorbunova-Yolkina: If it’s not your collection you personally gathered, it’s captive. I too think that “location is not accurate” will be the right attribute, since the organism has been dislocated from its natural habitat before I get the chance to take a pic in the museum. I…

You saw it e.g. today, in this museum, as not a wild animal, but a stuffed one, I don’t think it’s fair to mark it as inaccurate, cause you entered correct data on your encounter with it. I think tiwane said before not to mark it as date inaccurate. On iNat captive means just “moved by humans/moves…

I would only note that some objects practically cannot be photographed properly (allowing reliable identification of the species) in the wild. These are both microscopic objects and species whose identification requires special dissection of the specimen or special angles at high magnification (whic…

Do Museum Specimens Count As Captive?

General

kevinfaccenda January 25, 2023, 4:58am 5

If the location is set to the museum rather than the place they were collected, use the “location is not accurate” flag to mark them as casual

Topic		Replies	Views
Museum Specimens / Antique Photos and iNaturalist General question	42	2731	July 15, 2022
How should taxidermy observations be treated? General question	26	911	November 2, 2024
Annotating preserved specimens General	19	402	February 28, 2025
Non-target observations in herbarium specimens - do they have a place on iNaturalist? General	33	1134	September 18, 2022
Which observations should be flagged? General question	37	1440	June 5, 2023

Do Museum Specimens Count As Captive?

Related topics