Excellent, thanks everybody for the clarification. No thumbs down on the Organism is wild field for escaped pets from now on and I’ll go back and change the designation for observations I hit the thumbs down on previously.
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Because the tree can’t move. If the budgie falls dead on the ground the second it leaves the house I wouldn’t count it either.
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Makes me glad I don’t comment on everything!
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been there, done that. haha
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Just reiterating a comment I made in this discussion on an escaped bird record.
I think of it as “wild/captive” describing it state, not its origin.
Observation fields like “escapee” or “cultivar” are used as a descriptor of origin.
Having said that I just ran into this record (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/33093106) where an escaped pet was found wandering “wild”, but returned to captivity shortly thereafter. That one would be marked captive in my view.
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In my humble opinion, if population is or becomes established, yes list it. In ebird, one time sitings are called rarities such as a falcated duck that was seen for the first time ever in Anchorage. It was the talk of the town. Once I witnessed a couple of Plum Headed Parakeets that flew about. Saw them on multiple days also. However in this case I chose not to add them one ebird. Learned they come from the Himalayas which is somewhat similar in climate to Anchorage so could of been the beginning however I never saw them after that. The owner probably moved away. I like to count or list anything free of being captive. To me it is best practice as a record begins at the very beginning of a possible establishment. Another story was about 2 Secretary Birds escaped from the zoo. They were thriving for months. I never heard how it ended but if I was there I would have counted or listed them in my postings of both ebird and iNaturalist. Anyway, just being anecdotal and expressing my opinion throughout this comment.
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I can only propose you to use the criterion that is followed in botany for alien plants: an alien plant that is observed growing in the wild but that still has not formed a stable population falls in the class of the casual species. (NB: not to be confused with casul observations!). Most of these species are doomed to disappear but some of them are at the beginning of their invasion.
So I would consider it as wild.
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How should we categorize animals that are feral but don’t morphologically match established feral populations?
For example, there seems to be a population of feral hogs in my area (likely descended from a few escaped pets). They’re clearly potbelly pigs, but they’re also definitely feral. I haven’t figured out if “wild boar” or “domestic pig” is a better descriptor.
Same goes for other recently feral animals, like whether pigeons clearly descended from racing pigeons should be called “feral pigeon” or “domestic pigeon.”
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I don’t know for sure about pig taxonomy, but for pigeons the question is irrelevant - domestic pigeon and feral pigeon are the same variety, Columba livia var. domestica. This is a separate issue from whether to mark an individual observation as captive/cultivated or not.
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Agreed, whether the “ancestral stock” was domesticated or not doesn’t influence whether it is captive/cultivated or not. It’s the condition of the individual organism. So a reproducing colony of feral house cats is wild as are feral potbelly pigs, etc. Wikipedia says that Vietnamese potbelly pigs are domestic pigs (S. scrofa domesticus).
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