New: Predators Project

I understand wanting to limit it to carnivory, and personally think carnivorous plants would be interesting to include!

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In general or someone in particular?

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Someone in particular because of his several photos of birds clutching fish, but of course I’d recommend it to others where appropriate.

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Oh sorry I thought you wrote “recommend”. As in, I should go find someone like that. Whoops! :sweat_smile: I’m glad you like the project!

I have one photo of 2 southern ground hornbills (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27891006) each with a different amphibian. Can the project allow for 2 species in the “prey” field? I’ve already posted the photos to id the prey (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27891001 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27891000) . Thanks

It would need to be two separate datapoints, so one observation for each bird.

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I assume scavenging isn’t part of the intent of this project? For example I have an observation of turkey vultures on pinniped remains (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/29993404), but I doubt they killed it themselves.

Being a bit new, I’m not sure how one can always identify the species that is the prey. What species is that Egret holding? I tried looking at the project observations (to see what kind of identification was given to the prey in cases where I felt it would be hard to tell) but I can’t find how to access that info within the project and looking at the individual observations doesn’t seem to necessarily reveal it. (some identify the prey in a comment but not always).

Additionally, does one need to have the predator at species level id? For example, it’s rare that any photo of a spider I take makes it to species level identification therefore I would presume they wouldn’t be eligible for the project - although even if I could get the spider to species level, I doubt I would ever get the prey at species level.

So I guess I’m asking, do I need species level id for both prey and predator? If so, I doubt I’d ever get that lucky at an observation. :-) It’s a cool project, though.

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No, but we could always make a scavengers project. Anyone else interested?

Neither predator nor prey needs to be species-level. In this case I photographed the school of fish and IDed them as mummichogs, but otherwise would have left it at “ray-finned fishes”. And tons of species are really hard to get to species level without close examination or even dissection so honestly that would be unreasonable I think.

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If anyone is interested in seeing species-level observations only they can always use the search filter.

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Okay, perhaps I was being to literal when I read the project guidelines. You did use the word species in your original post and it’s used in the terms and rules of the project. Again… newbie kind of question - it would seem that you’re not using the word species, in this case, to mean species level identification. Because some projects do require species level identification so it might be good to make that clear for this project. I guess I would choose a word other than species. But, I’m pedantic at times. :-) I’m thrilled that I can likely find observations that would qualify.

edit to add : what does this mean? “quality grade research, needs_id”

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here is a related project that may be of interest:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/odonata-predation-eating

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Thanks, I joined that one.

Well, every observation is of a species whether or not that species has been identified. ;)
But yes, I can edit the description.

The Trials of Life project sounds similar.

for what it’s worth, I tried adding an observation to the project the other day. It was a spider with a fly as prey, but I didn’t have the species for the fly. It wouldn’t let me add it. It would let me choose ‘fly’ in the drop down menu but the add button remained greyed out and I couldn’t get it to actually go through the process of adding it.

But that’s okay. It’s obviously working for other people and I don’t need to figure this one out. :-)

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