I know some naturalists have used these low cost devices (the kind you plug into a smart phone and are generally used for more mundane tasks like plumbing and car repairs) in the field for various situations and I’m thinking of playing around with them myself. What I would like to get my hands on b…

I was confused when I saw the topic. To me an endoscope is a medical thing. It goes into the bowel, or down the oesophagus to look for stuff. I thought you were looking for tapeworms!

I think @ broacher is talking about the low end/personal endoscopes that you can get for $20-100 on amazon or at a car parts store, etc. They are used for things like going in home plumbing pipes or down into valves in car engines to spot problems (and I’m sure for many other uses). I don’t have an…

Now you got me wondering. Has anyone actually submitted photos of their personal parasites (internal and/or external) as observations? Wow. Bet there’s a special award for that.

I’m glad you brought up this topic, because I too have been hoping to get something like the USB microscope that I used to use for checking kids’ hair for lice. :scream: However those little microscopes have very low resolution. I see that the one @brian_d has shared above is only 1920x1080 pixels, …

Thanks brian_d for that very richly detailed account of using the desktop microscopes. And that’s another device I’m considering – but only for at home study. The cable-mounted endoscopes I’m more interested in because I can see them as a potential field observing tool, especially for macro/super-m…

Yes, thanks cthawley, that’s exactly what I"m talking about. I think that they may have great potential for field observing. Especially the newer models. I’m looking an Amazon unit that’s around $50 (USD) that has a much higher resolution camera chip than what is the ‘standard’ 1280 (HD video) reso…

Hi caroltelfer! Your concern about resolution is exactly why I gave up a few years ago on explloring these devices for observation work. What’s changed recently is the introduction of new models with much higher res. If you look at my other reply () you’ll see the link to what I’m talking about. B…

Has anyone actually submitted photos of their personal parasites (internal and/or external) as observations? This reminds me of something interesting I saw a while back that I’ve been waiting for a chance to share here. One user deliberately allowed themselves to be infected with human botfly lar…

Wow. That’s out of my payband, for sure. Though I have to admit that the observation notes seemed to lean heavily on the ‘freak show’ side of things. And I also wonder about both the ethics and possible legal implications of this stunt. Wilfully introducing non-indigenous human parasites? I don’t k…

Check out a post I put up earlier today: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/scoping-out-endoscopy/32683/8?u=broacher

Scoping out endoscopy

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Scoping out endoscopy

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