It’s been an exciting few weeks here at iNat at the Olympics. The judges have conferred and have awarded the medals.
On the Tree of Life field:
Gold: Insects with a whopping 253 species.
Silver: Plants a respectable showing for an urban area at 157 species.
Bronze: The Birds take it with 37 species. The Arachnids looked like they had a chance but could not pull it out. They come in 4th with 25.
The remaining standings:
Fifth: Fungi (9)
Sixth: Molluscs (8) tied with Other Animals (which turned out to be Arthropods)
Seventh: Reptiles (3)
Eighth: A tie between Mammals and Ray Finned Fishes with 2.
Chromista and Protozoans did not make it on the board.
Over in the Species race:
Gold: Black Headed Gull (17)
Silver: Carrion Crow (16)
Bronze: Rock Pigeon (12)
The Common Carder Bumble Bee also had 12 but judges disqualified two of the observations as they are suspiciously similar, i.e., they look like the same organism.
Shocking us all, Mallard, who usually places in the top three in other Species races, is 4th.
The true winner, though, is science and conservation with 1,017 observations made of 507 species by 222 observers identified by 137 people.
Cue the Olympic song played over a moving montage of observations and observers.
Well, the Olympics are over but I will say this: it was good that attention was brought to water quality in the Seine.
I feel for the athletes who got sick. I’m a wild swimmer myself, and when I see something like this:
I find myself full of anger. Not just that this is the case, but also that the populace puts up with it. The news stories I’ve been reading about trying to clean up the Seine for the Olympics suggest that this was not meant to be a one-off, but that Parisians would like to be able to swim in their river going forward. We may hope so.
Cleaning up the Seine is an old politics empty promise. I was born and grew up in Paris, I remember when Jacques Chirac was still mayor and said he would swim in the Seine. Parisians enjoy the pop-up beach every summer, but just to get a tan and people-watching (if it were a sport, we’d get gold for sure).
The mallard made a move for gold because it thought it was a duck it hadn’t met before. All jokes aside, this was a fun read, thanks for bringing attention to wild life in the city.