Animals like Felis catus and Columba livia var. domestica are actually NOT actually wild. Should we disable it to be “Research Grade” just like Homo sapiens?
what makes you say those species cannot be wild? There are quite literally millions of feral cats in Australia alone, numerous generations removed from any form of domesticity or ownership, living in highly remote areas utterly removed from humans
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From iNat’s Archived Help Page:
What does captive / cultivated mean?
Checking captive / cultivated means that the observation is of an organism that exists in the time and place it was observed because humans intended it to be then and there. Likewise, wild / naturalized organisms exist in particular times and places because they intended to do so (or because of intention of another wild organism). The main reason we try to mark things like this is because iNat is primarily about observing wild organisms, not animals in zoos, garden plants, specimens in drawers, etc., and our scientific data partners are often not interested in (or downright alarmed by) observations of captive or cultivated organisms.Since this tends to be kind of a gray area, here are some concrete examples:
Captive / cultivated (planted)
- zebra in a zoo
- poppy in a garden
- tree planted 1, 10, or 100 years ago by humans
- butterfly mounted in a display case and not appropriately marked with date and location of original collection
- your pet such as a dog or cat
- plants that grew from seeds that were planted in the ground or scattered
Wild
- zebra in the Serengeti (assuming it’s not in a zoo in the Serengeti)
- fly on a zebra in a zoo
- weed or other unintended plant growing in a garden
- butterfly that flew into a building
- snake that you just picked up (yes, it’s in your hand where you intended it to be, but the place and time is where the snake intended to be)
- feral dog or cat
- your museum/herbarium specimens that are appropriately marked with date and location of original collection
- garden plant that is reproducing on its own and spreading outside of the intended gardening area
- a pigeon that benefits from human populations but is not actually raised by humans
- a bird caught by a pet cat (presuming the bird isn’t also a pet)
- a bird (not pet bird) that comes to an outdoor bird feeder
- living organisms dispersed by the wind, water, and other forces apart from humans
- a species that had been introduced to a new region and has established a population outside of human care
Captive / cultivated (planted)
- your pet such as a dog or cat
Wild
- feral dog or cat
Also there are many other topics about this on the forum.
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I apologize here for my lack of knowledge. My intention in posting was that I believed both animals obtain food through humans, but I hadn’t considered the scenario mentioned by @thebeachcomber, nor had I seen the prompt on iNaturalist. Thank you to everyone in this discussion for bringing these to my attention.
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no apologies needed, all here to learn
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