Any observation of a human being gets automatically flagged as casual, which is completely justified, but it got me wondering what criteria you’d need to meet for a genuine observation. If somebody gets lost in the woods at a young age, raised by wolves & is 100% disconnected from human society - d…

None of that counts as non-casual. All observations of humans are Casual by definition on iNaturalist.

Observations of humans and human artifacts are casual because they are not considered relevant data points regarding the natural (non-human) world – it is iNaturalist, not iAnthropologist. This is not about some idea that they are “cultivated” rather than “wild”. Observations may be casual for any …

Seems that a feral wolf-boy or wolf-girl should count. ;-). But yeah, no Homo sapiens will be RG on iNat.

Well, technically any human (that is not currently dragged off by a ferocious beast, or the elements) is where it is because a human (they themselves, or another one) has put it there. So it seems that the only times where you could make a RG observation of Homo sapiens, are those when you, ethicall…

[image] scarnoncunce: uncontacted peoples are still not ‘Wild animals’ for iNat.

[image] eyekosaeder: technically any human (that is not currently dragged off by a ferocious beast, or the elements) is where it is because a human (they themselves, or another one) has put it there But one could just as easily make the argument from the other direction: all of these are wher…

Bigfoot and Wildboy (1977 TV show): https://youtu.be/-NNb1pgQlQo?si=CADiovoelFz1OL4Y Harry and the Hendersons (1987 movie): https://youtu.be/5DOX1Poxro4?si=-Anv6rxXkNlytViC

This is disgusting but I think an observation of human feces outside of sanitary facilities could hypothetically be considered for RG, if only because of the disconnect between the pooper and their poop. I don’t believe this should happen though, and I’m fine with all Homo sapiens observations remai…

Mathieu, you reminded me of something I wrote in a different thread: [image] You know you're seriously into iNat when Do you detect a theme in the quotes below? [image] You know you're seriously into iNat when they should just be happy that what you’re showing them is flowers . . . this grou…

All of these until someone suggest otherwise? Edit: For some reason all of them are marked wild.

I think if we are going to recognize a dichotomy between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ (as iNaturalist does), the only way to do so without very quickly descending into bigotry is to recognise all human beings*, without exception, as part of ‘culture’ and by extension ineligible for research grade status o…

Hypothetically, what qualifies as a non-casual human observation?

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Would there ever be a situation where an observation labeled as "Human" would be anything other than "Casual"? General	25	479	February 22, 2026
Should H. sapiens observations with historic value still be casual? General	17	1433	June 2, 2023
Human Observations with Wild/Captive/Introduced/Native statuses General	13	667	May 30, 2025
What is the point of Casual Observations? General question	29	5061	January 18, 2020
Why do we have observations of "Human"? General	55	5467	July 11, 2020

Hypothetically, what qualifies as a non-casual human observation?

Related topics