Way to filter out dead animal observations?

Hi all!

I was wondering if there is a way to filter out observations that contain pictures of dead animals through the annotation feature “Alive or Dead” - I see that under the “Identify” tab, you can filter to observations containing the “with or without” annotation, but unless I’m missing something right under my nose, there isn’t a way to select “without ‘Dead’ annotation”.

Thank you in advance, and I apologize if this has already been covered in the forums - I wasn’t able to find it! I love a lot of animals that are unfortunately usual for roadkill (opossums, skunks) and want to work on identifying subspecies and more, but honestly I don’t like seeing dead opossum after dead opossum :,)

Best,

Dixie

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You can manually edit the URL:

Update to add that per @bouteloua’s comment, this only returns observations where the Alive/Dead annotation has been filled in. For those without the field, you can use:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?without_term_id=17

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See the ‘Search for Annotations’ section on this page:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-2-of-2/18792

Essentially, add the following to your URL:

“&term_id=17&without_term_value_id=19” which will exclude any observations with a DEAD annotation.

Example:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=martyndrabik&verifiable=any&term_id=17&without_term_value_id=19

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Looks like those only show observations that are annotated as “alive” or “cannot be determined”, rather than all observations without a “dead” annotation though.

without_term_value_id=19 (dead) doesn’t work on its own, i.e. to show both unannotated observations and also those annotated “alive” or “cannot be dermined” / excluding “dead”. Relevant convo here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identify-filter-without-annotation-not-working-properly/30148/

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Some earlier threads (I feel your pain - there was a West African project carefully recording what came to the fish market. Dead fish. Dead shark. Dead turtle. It is serious research but, pages and pages)

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/implement-photo-blur-on-observations-annotated-as-dead/21214 declined April 2023

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-bookmark-an-identify-search-excluding-obs-with-dead-annotations/35976

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/caution-dead-animal-image-in-observation/14574

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Thank you all dearly! I will start using this url when I’m trying to find opossum observations :slight_smile: you all are the best!

2 Likes

Unless the appropriate annotation has been filled out, nope.

You can certainly filter out observations where dead observation subjects have been annotated as such, but otherwise I’m afraid you’re out of luck.