Rarest Finds on Inaturalist

Discovered this almost intact seashell specimen of a West African Hemipolygona sp., empty, in a very shallow ocean lagoon of Tenerife Island near my home.

Are more complex quality Gastropoda shell photos, like this example, even accepted for iNaturalist Obs.???

  • Yeah! :ok_hand:t5:
  • Nooo! :o:
0 voters

Or only for InvertEBase \ Gbif ?

my iNaturalist observation

3 Likes

Should these two forum posts be merged? https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-is-the-rarest-animal-plant-you-have-ever-seen/31810/229

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The title of that one says that it is for rare animals and plants, but this one is for anything, so I donā€™t know if they should be merged.

Most of what I see is fairly common so it was a surprise to me, when I went back and looked at this tiny Hudsonian Ladybird beetle https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/193086231 that there were only 2 other iNat observations in the whole giant state of Alaska, and all 3 are hundreds of miles apart! I took the photo many years ago, long before I joined iNat, so Iā€™m glad to know that my curiosity led to a scientific data point.

4 Likes

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=336908&user_id=ra_teo&verifiable=any - a lifer with little over 350 obs worldwide (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=336908)ā€¦ this might be my rarest one so far

People who can ID sponges as anything other than ā€œSpongesā€ are as rare as henā€™s teeth. I work in southeast Asia as a marine biology academic and only know one member of the Poriferati in real life. Heā€™s not on iNat. He says he canā€™t do better than an amateur with only a photograph.

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I donā€™t know if I said this before but I actually have two obs of unidentified sharks from 2023 in Tonga.