No, for iNat it doesn’t matter, there’s no feral, it’s either in captivity or wild.
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“there is a clear difference between the meanings of wild and feral and it matters.”
There is a difference between the meanings of wild and feral, though the terms overlap. However, iNaturalist is a “citizens science” project that anyone can participate in. Language and translation can cause confusion. Observers include people who occasionally post rocks, missing the distinction between alive and not. Many observers are unclear on iNaturalist’s simple distinction (wild = it got there by itself, even if just as an escaped pet; captive/cultivated = it’s there because people put it there). Expecting iNaturalist observers to distinguish between wild, feral, and captive/cultivated is too much. I’m happy with just the two categories.
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That assumes that someone bothers to look at something besides the picture itself.
Then there is wild rice, which is often cultivated, but still referred to as wild rice to distinguish it from white or brown rice.
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Even if they are feral and not wild, thy are still very useful observations, that’s why they don’t count as captive and the difference between wild and feral isn’t that important for iNat.
Exactly.
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In iNaturalist, users do not mark whether an organism is feral/domestic or wild-type - that is generally a population-level trait related to domestication history, rather than a quality of the individual observation. All Rock Pigeons in North America are feral or domestic, for example, so there is no reason to have that as an option to select.
Even in places where both feral/domestic and wild-type individuals are present, that status is part of the individual’s evolutionary history and so not an attribute of the individual observation. In that case, many species have a “domestic” subspecies or variant as part of the taxonomy to indicate this.
In contrast, the DQA “captive/cultivated” box indicates whether the individual observation relates to a captive or cultivated individual. That is regardless of whether it is feral/domestic or wild-type. Most captive animals in a zoo are wild-type and not domestic, and all feral animals (by definition) are not captive.
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The two terms are not antonyms or exclusive. All feral animals are, by definition, wild. In this context, “wild” typically refers to not being captive or cared for directly by humans.
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I got frustrated with seeing indoor cats marked as research grade, so I reviewed all 18K verifiable and research grade cats last month. I was happily surprised to find only about 1-2% of the research grade cats were clearly misclassified indoor pets. But then I started going through the casual cats and found that a lot of them were wrongly marked as captive by the database (or by identifiers who didn’t ask). There are thousands of lost feral cats in the casual pile. I am now trying to monitor the cat observations as they come in, but I think that effort will fall by the wayside as things get busier in the spring.
In any case, with outdoor cats, I always ask the observer before making a decision myself. My personal guideline is if a cat receives intentional shelter and medical care from humans, it is a pet. If it just receives food and is always fed outdoors, then feral makes sense since the cat decides on its whereabouts and breeding efforts. The offering of food outdoors to stray animals is simply an act of charity without the intention of ownership or control, similar to wild bird feeding.
To prevent feral cats (or dogs) from wrongly being marked as captive, I advise observers to always leave a note saying “feral” or “pet”. That way if the database wrongly flags a feral animal as captive, an identifier can easily see whether a corrective vote is needed, and also notify the observer to cast a vote if necessary.
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Someone recently went through every single observation of chickens and put a DQA downvote on all of them, even where the observer had clearly stated they were feral.
If anyone is interested in assisting with the accurate documentation of feral populations, I’ve created a project for feral examples of domesticated species: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/feral-observations-of-domesticated-species
I’ve run across a lot of observations recently that are obviously feral but have too many DQA votes for my counter-vote to do anything, and commenting and tagging the voters usually gets no response. So if you see an obviously feral observation, please add it to the project - it’ll be easier to pool our DQA votes that way.
If you feel like helping with the DQA, this link will take you to the observations in the project that are still marked casual: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=casual&verifiable=any&project_id=132006&captive=any&place_id=any
And just going through and giving “wild” vote to the non-casual ones can be helpful too, to avoid messes like today’s where 90% of the feral chickens suddenly go casual.
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A bit in the weeds, but I think a lot of the remaining chicken observations are in a gray area. It’s hard to know if those are captive birds that are being allowed to roam but are still being fed by their owners (similar to outdoor domestic cats or a dog on an off-leash beach area, which should not be RG), versus truly feral flocks that are surviving on their own.
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I’ve selected ones that are in parks / natural areas away from homes (definitely abandoned or feral birds), in downtown / industrial areas where there’s no way anyone would let a personal flock be loose, or birds that appear to be in public spaces of areas with known established feral flocks (Yuba City, Fair Oaks, Sacramento, Cotati).
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When the observer doesn’t provide any info, such as “this is a feral flock”, it’s kind of hard for a reviewer to make that call based on a photo. I’ve run into that with so many domestics where it might be feral or might not, but if the observer can’t take a moment to add a sentence in the Notes that provides some context, I’ll usually move on.
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These are two different scenarios.
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Why is it too much to expect some basic distinctions? These are not hard words to understand and they are the sort of thing that anyone interested in the natural world should be aware of. Citizen Science is not a get out of jail free card for people - being a citizen scientist simply means that science is not your profession, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to try.
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Why does anyone put dogs and cats into iNat? I simply do not understand the motivation.
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They’re animals, they’re part of nature, you don’t have to post something you don’t want, but your question is the same as asking why people post plants or amoebas, they care and they can.
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I think a lot of people don’t understand what’s required/would be helpful of them. Many people will upload their indoor pet dog or indoor pet cat and think they are doing this stuff right. I just assume that everybody who I don’t already know, is innocently navigating the site and if they make mistakes (or what I perceive as mistakes), I again, assume, it’s innocent. I apply that logic to everything, including feral vs not. Not knowing isn’t not trying. It’s an opportunity to help and teach people how to navigate the site correctly, which is part of the site’s mission, anyways.
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I’m really struggling to understand your point about the definitions. Who is misinterpreting “wild” versus “feral”? All feral individuals are by definition wild.
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“Why is it too much to expect some basic distinctions?”
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Actually, the distinction between “feral” and “wild” is difficult for many people to understand, especially because “wild” is justifiably used for organisms one would call “feral” if being exact.
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It is good not to have high expectations of a group that includes those who post “wild organisms” like rocks, the moon, street trees, caged birds, and potted plants.
I suspect that nearly all those posting on iNaturalist are trying to do a good job, but many start from a very low level of understanding.
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