Not trying to upset anyone or start an ethics debate, but obviously there are many reasons an observer might kill an organism, such as hunting or fishing for food, eradicating invasive species, pest control, etc. I am curious what the observer should annotate in a case where the organism was alive when the photo was taken, but was then killed before the photo was uploaded to iNaturalist. For example, this American Dog Tick I removed from my body and humanely dispatched after photographing it:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/224565267
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It should be marked as the state it was in when you photographed it, for sure.
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I believe the guidelines say that it’s not exactly the state you photographed it in, but the state you observed it in.
If you find it alive, but then it dies, you annotate it with alive. If you collect a living specimen to preserve it, it’s also marked alive as you found it alive (also make sure to have the time and location to when and where you found the specimen).
You should only mark an organism dead if you found it dead or naturally dying.
Remember, annotations are moreso for the data than a way to sort photos (although sorting photos is an added benefit). You encountered a live tick, not a dead one, so it would be annotated as alive.
More discussion in this thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/preserved-specimens-labelled-as-dead/37762
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My understanding is that you can and probably should mark the organism alive. If I photo it alive, I mark it alive even if I’m about to kill that mosquito. If you’ve just killed it, so it’s still where it was when last alive, you have the option of marking it either alive or dead. (I would pick alive.)
If it has become all gory and your photos show that, and therefore it will upset the more squeamish among us, for goodness sake mark it dead! That gives people some chance of avoiding what they don’t want to see. (In this case, also make sure the first photo posted is as inoffensive as possible, even if you have to crop the photo or mask the worse parts.)
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The annotation reflects the state of the organism when it was observed. If you observed it alive and then killed it, it’s perfectly fine to annotate it as Alive. Contrary to how it is sometimes treated, “Dead” is not meant to be used as a content warning for pictures depicting something dead. Most collected specimens of plants and insects, for example, are photographed after they’ve been killed, but are properly annotated as “Alive.” Here’s an older post confirming this is the preferred practice:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/annotate-dead-or-alive/17537
The downside to annotating things you killed as “Dead” is that most researchers filtering to “Dead” are likely to be interested in organisms found dead, not organisms that were killed after being discovered before they were photographed. So personally, I would say definitely annotate the tick as “Alive”, since that’s how you found it- the state it was in when you took the picture is not what this annotation is meant to convey.
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I’d annotate it as alive.
Not sure what you mean by “naturally” here, but a snake dying after being hit by a car should be annotated as “dead”. Doesn’t have to be natural causes.
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Or the instance of some organisms, if they need genitalia examination(like those in Abraxas/Microlepidoptera) to ID, they would be needed to be dissected for identification.
Oh, I meant the observer killing/hurting the organism before photographing it (like slapping a mosquito)
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Good to know. I wondered how to annotate fish that were in hand knowing that even if it was a “catch and release” situation, some released fish will not live. But this makes it clear. It was alive when caught, so should be marked alive. Thanks for the question.
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Wait seriously? Pinned entomological specimens should be annotated as alive? I need to go clean up my observations then… This was a revelation for me, thank you so much for pointing this out. It makes perfect sense but I was clearly being too literal with my interpretation.
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I think they meant that it was still alive but clearly near death, like if you found an organism at the end of its life. Yes, its still alive, but its so near death that it won’t recover.
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If the date/time/location are for when it was caught in the wild, it should be annotated alive and be wild.
If the date/time/location are for when it was pinned in the collection, it should be annotated dead and marked as captive.
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I personally only include capture metadata, this is helpful information for when I identify specimens posted from people’s labs or homes though thank you very much. I typically just encourage them to update the date/location, but it’s good to know there’s an option if they don’t update the observation.
I found this field that meets the need expressed:
Did you kill it?= Yes!
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Organisms could be killed right after you photograph them by a predator. If annotating, I would certainly annotate it as alive.
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