What is the RAREST animal/plant you have ever seen

Ya, I haven’t seen one in a while. They are rare in my area

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Do you have northern or loggerhead in your area?

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The Hawaiian Monk seal! There are fewer than 400 around the main Hawaiian islands and one popped up out of the water right in front of me and my husband. It moved onto the beach and was almost immediately surrounded by people, many of whom had dogs with them. I called the hotline and we stayed and ushered people a further distance away until the team arrived to keep watch. It appalled me how many people thought it was okay to get so close and let their barking dogs terrify the poor seal. Seeing the monk seal was a huge bonus for our trip!

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Nice find!!!

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Northern

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Only Northern?

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yes, well at least for me so far. I haven’t seen a Loggerhead but Others have

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Oh, so loggers do live there. They are fascinating, I’m so glad I finally saw them.

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For me I think it is a Arum besserianum
This specie have only 41 observations and they all from Ukraine except mine

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I found quite a rare Diptera specimen, one of the small headed Bee-fly’s, back in 2016: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/645996-Stenopialea

And just last year, I found a very rare Spider in the Genus Griswoldia (Genus recently revised): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/91507581

I find quite alot of iNat firsts every year especially for plants

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Lucky lucky!!

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Well yours is almost from Ukraine, it’s just de Moldovan-Ukrainian border haha!

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XD
Kind of)

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I’m not sure if it’s rare or not, but I’m the only one so far with an observation:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/62170755

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Hey I thought at first that the fly was headless! :rofl:

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That’s pretty easy, I have found many bugs that have never been photographed or sighted before, because they are a completely new species so I cannot really pick one

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That was my first thought in reading the question here. ‘Rarest observed’ vs ‘rarest missed completely’.

‘Seen’ in the case of visible lifeform encounters must be a small percentage of the actual encounter spectrum.

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Well, not much of an iNat history (tomorrow is my 50th day) but I thought I’d put in for the ‘rarest from a noobie award’. But I’d have to qualify that to ‘for local region’ and ‘needs identification’.

Anyhow, I spotted this little beauty last week while trying to shoot something more common. Didn’t know what it was until I got back to check and if this gets ID’d, it’s the first iNat observation of this for my local region.

I think it’s Anotia uhleri. (A planthopper)

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You should post in iNat milestones topic, wouldn’t guess you weren’t here until two months ago!

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Thanks Marina, but… no thanks. I’m trying to avoid upgrading this very pleasant hobby into the obsession ransk (for as long as I can, anyhow). At this stage, I love the adventure, the exploration, the discovery. But I don’t think I need that as much as most.

It’s like my music playlist. An old iPod would be overkill for my musical listening habits. That is, I don’t have any. And I love music and I’ve been in a chorus for almost 3 decades. But… I might listen to a total of six song tracks a week, on average. Maybe less. But I do love learning about the songs, the music, the history, etc. etc.

And with observations, I almost feel like I could stop where I am right now and be happy to study what I’ve found in a month for a few more years. But fortunately, I also love getting out to the trails so I suspect I’ll keep on looking.

Now if I could only figure out a way to get my step count back to pre-iNat days. It’s been brutal and I’ve had to resort to a treadmill more and more to reach my daily goals. I find that I’m spending more time and getting fewer steps with each successive week.

And I’m already starting to stare at the bugs that land in people’s hair with more intent than I should in a social situation. (Why wasn’t I warned?)

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