Wild vs. Captive/Cultivated Gray Areas

I had some time over this weekend and came up with a list of situations that come up often where the dividing line between wild and captive/cultivated can be ambiguous
As it stands, escaped animals and self-spreading plants are considered wild on iNaturalist. However, what about the following edge cases? Which of these would you consider wild and which would you consider captive? Feel free to come up with more and discuss

-livestock that are free-roaming and aren’t bound by fencing or pens
-pathogenic diseases affecting livestock or pets
-cats or birds (pigeons, chickens, etc) that can go anywhere but come back to a garden or house at night
-algae/snails/worms/etc in a home aquarium that were not introduced to it on purpose
-a pathogenic fungus or virus affecting supermarket produce (not local)
-plant parasites or galls on plants being sold at a nursery or garden store
-pest insect in a bag of pre-washed frozen vegetables
-garden plant spreading vegetatively beyond cultivation through runners or rhizomes (but importantly, not by seed)
-honeybees in an orchard that come from managed hives
-finding an animal in a vehicle/storage container/etc (e.g. driving to California from Pennsylvania and finding a living spotted lanternfly in your car)
-captive-release animals that constantly stay in the vicinity of the release site

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Captive. Still managed and fed by humans, and presumably kept healthy and somewhat restricted to one region.

Wild.

Captive.

Wild.

Wild.

Captive.

Wild, if only because the data could be useful.

Wild.

Didn’t answer those I thought were edge cases or wasn’t sure on.

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Interesting cases, here are my opinions on these, but others may disagree:
-livestock that are free-roaming and aren’t bound by fencing or pens WILD if outside of owners’ intended grazing area
-pathogenic diseases affecting livestock or pets WILD unless deliberately introduced, like for research
-cats or birds (pigeons, chickens, etc) that can go anywhere but come back to a garden or house at night CULTIVATED if they’re deliberately released, which we can often just infer if the cat has a collar or pigeon has a band.
-algae/snails/worms/etc in a home aquarium that were not introduced to it on purpose Interesting case… but I would say WILD.
-a pathogenic fungus or virus affecting supermarket produce (not local) WILD unless deliberately introduced, like for research
-plant parasites or galls on plants being sold at a nursery or garden store WILD unless deliberately introduced, like for research
-pest insect in a bag of pre-washed frozen vegetables Hmmm… I’d probably say WILD if you can identify where it was harvested, otherwise I’d probably say WILD with unknown location
-garden plant spreading vegetatively beyond cultivation through runners or rhizomes (but importantly, not by seed) I would probably say CULTIVATED unless it moves beyond the local area (like is washed downstream or through transferring topsoil).
-honeybees in an orchard that come from managed hives This one is difficult. I think if you can be sure it’s from the managed hive then CULTIVATED, otherwise we would have to assume it’s WILD.
-finding an animal in a vehicle/storage container/etc (e.g. driving to California from Pennsylvania and finding a living spotted lanternfly in your car) I would call this WILD, as we often see plants and animals inadvertently transported across country or across the world. That’s often how many invasive species get started.
-captive-release animals that constantly stay in the vicinity of the release site Another tough one, but I would probably call this WILD if they’re just in the local area. However, if they’re dependent upon humans for survival, I’d be more inclined to call them CULTIVATED.

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I reckon:

As soon as it’s multiplying by itself it’s wild. (Introduced=/=captive)

Captive

Definitely wild

Same - definitely wild. The organism that is the focus of the observation is not being deliberately put in that place by humans - just following its habitat/food. Accidentally introduced =/= captive, for me it has to be a deliberate act on the part of a human in respect of that particular organism (not it’s host/food/habitat)

Captive if you can tell for sure. But 99% of the time you can’t, so wild.

Wild - not there by intentional human action.

wild.

This is the greyest one for me as local attitudes can play a part. In the UK things like deer in parkland and Dartmoor Ponies (which cannot leave the moor) tend to be left as wild.

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These are my own opinions that may or may not agree with inaturalist policy.

  1. If they are being raised for meat/milk then captive. If they aren’t and are just free to roam around wherever like mustangs, then wild.

  2. Wild - the disease wasn’t intended to be there by humans

  3. If they are a pet taken care of by humans then captive, even if they wander around. If they are feral then wild.

4,5,6, and 7. Wild - Same reasoning as #2

  1. If its spread beyond the area of cultivation and is not being taken care of by a human, then wild. Otherwise, if a human is caring for it then captive.

  2. Captive - the bees were brought there intentionally by humans and are cared for by then (although, it would be hard to tell a captive bee apart from a feral honeybee in the field)

  3. Wild - see logic for #2

  4. If its caring for itself, its wild.

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As a Peruvian I’d like to add something to this. In some S. American countries it’s customary to leave livestock to roam through the bushland (same with cattle dogs) and, if you’re walking through a “wilderness” area ( by a forest road, a lake/creek/river deep in the mountains) you are very likely to encounter missing cattle or dogs, which rarely return to their owners and cause all sorts of damage to the native vegetation (which is not adapted to large grazing herbivores). Goats specifically are a big problem for the native trees/herbs, because they can climb so much higher than cows or horses, and eat the emerging buds of our deciduous species, preventing them from sprouting. Dogs don’t do that, but there is at least one colony of truly wild dogs within one of our National Parks… (or nature reserves I can’t recall!) which have somehow adapted without wreaking too much havoc in the native foodchain.

And to not steer too far from the topic, I’d definitely call these wild. Not intended to be there by humans.

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Last year, after a good few years of research, they sprayed spores of a rust fungus that targets the invasive (to where I am) Himalayan balsam on some sites - including the local river. I didn’t spot the fungus last year… but I suppose strictly it’s cultivated (it got there entirely by humans and hadn’t spread yet). Given it’s point is as a biocontrol that’ll come back year on year and they did nothing much after it was sprayed other than a few surveys, it seems silly to record it as such.

I also agree with how different places will view it differently. I’d consider the deer in Richmond Park wild - they get the odd bit of medical attention (but then urban foxes in London do too - there’s a couple charities just for that) but otherwise they’re just left to be. But I can totally see the argument that these deer who aren’t allowed to wander outside the park and wreak havoc on the suburbs of West London (not even a little havoc as a treat, poor guys!) are captive.

I dunno. I generally treat them more as guidelines than hard and fast rules - and I think you have to in a lot of cases. The old once-coppiced willows down by the river is huge enough to have been there under it’s own steam for a good 200 years. In UK terms that seems pretty wild to me. When the council doc lists “Planted (and subsequently self-sown) tree species” - some native, some definitely imports - I’d call them wild - even if there it’s hard to tell whether any individual tree was planted or those self-sown ones.

-livestock that are free-roaming and aren’t bound by fencing or pens
CAPTIVE
-pathogenic diseases affecting livestock or pets
WILD
-cats or birds (pigeons, chickens, etc) that can go anywhere but come back to a garden or house at night
CAPTIVE
-algae/snails/worms/etc in a home aquarium that were not introduced to it on purpose
WILD
-a pathogenic fungus or virus affecting supermarket produce (not local)
WILD WITH UNKNOWN PLACE
-plant parasites or galls on plants being sold at a nursery or garden store
WILD WITH UNKNOWN PLACE
-pest insect in a bag of pre-washed frozen vegetables
IF LOCAL WILD IF NOT LOCAL WILD WITH UNKNOWN PLACE
-garden plant spreading vegetatively beyond cultivation through runners or rhizomes (but importantly, not by seed)
ESCAPED, WILD
-honeybees in an orchard that come from managed hives
CAPTIVE
-finding an animal in a vehicle/storage container/etc (e.g. driving to California from Pennsylvania and finding a living spotted lanternfly in your car)
WILD WITH UNKNOWN PLACE
-captive-release animals that constantly stay in the vicinity of the release site
CAPTIVE

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I upload critters from my aquariums sometimes and generally just use common sense. Damselfly naiads or hydra or amphipods where I know they probably came from a pond in florida that I took some pearlweed from? Yeah wild, but I’ll notate their probable origin

On a similar note: sometimes I’ll upload bugs that I’ve collected and bred (isopods, terrestrial amphipods, millipedes etc), but will notate the exact collection location/date, even if the individual uploaded miiiight have been born in captivity its still typical of that exact locality if wild type

If anyone willing to help, there’re tons of observation of free-roaming captive horses, they spend most of the year away from humans (and don’t have anything on them or are often not claimed), but they still belong to someone, I don’t feel confident enough to mark them all by myself.

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-livestock that are free-roaming and aren’t bound by fencing or pens
Wild since they have the right to move anywhere and find food on their own if necessary
-pathogenic diseases affecting livestock or pets
Always wild, unless through vaccinations for trial diseases,
-cats or birds (pigeons, chickens, etc) that can go anywhere but come back to a garden or house at night
Always captive(unless the area is very far away from residential areas).
-algae/snails/worms/etc in a home aquarium that were not introduced to it on purpose
Captive, they are still benefitting from humans and are contained.
-a pathogenic fungus or virus affecting supermarket produce (not local)
Wild, although uncommon in the US and Canada.
-plant parasites or galls on plants being sold at a nursery or garden store
Always wild(all galls are wild unless they are in a lab)
-pest insect in a bag of pre-washed frozen vegetables
Wild, did not intend to be there.
-garden plant spreading vegetatively beyond cultivation through runners or rhizomes (but importantly, not by seed)
Captive since it is still spreading through rhizomes and runners, same organism complex. Unintentional escape by seed is wild.
-honeybees in an orchard that come from managed hives
Captive
-finding an animal in a vehicle/storage container/etc (e.g. driving to California from Pennsylvania and finding a living spotted lanternfly in your car)
Wild unless you intended it to be there.(same as insect in your house).
-captive-release animals that constantly stay in the vicinity of the release site
Can’t answer, depends on the circumstances.

For me, I try to avoid taking photos of any photos I am certain that have been planted. I try to assume every organism is wild unless there is confidence to prove the organism was planted. I may mark the livestock as captive if I see people feeding them regardless of pens or fencing, but if no one is there, I would mark them wild.

Another gray area: Humans themselves, id’ed as the species Homo sapiens, are frequently being marked as captive/cultivated. This has the unfortunate result/unintended consequence that instead of being swept into just the humans-casual pile, they also become more easily visible to anyone using the Captive search filter, right there along with the other captive animals and garden plants.

Worse, in a number of locations the system itself has been automarking people as captives because of so many user marks. Re “autocaptivation” of humans by iNat, the specification is in https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#quality section 8, bottom of section:

“The system will vote that the observation is not wild/naturalized if there are at least 10 other observations of a genus or lower in the smallest county-, state-, or country-equivalent place that contains this observation and 80% or more of those observations have been marked as not wild/naturalized.”

After recently countervoting between 10-20K of the ~58K captive/cultivated humans through this url
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=casual&per_page=100&captive=true&taxon_id=43584
I found limited impact in reducing iNat’s automarking effect.

I also took a test case of specifically Malaysia/Singapore where captive humans are very automarked: ~850 was reduced to ~650 by my countermarks, but since I am not able to counteract both a user’s and an iNat captive mark on a single obs, I was not able to bring the marks below 80%. (Other areas of automarking include swaths of California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, UK, France.)

We’ll need a programmatic fix, if this is an unintended consequence. Should it be a bug report or a feature request? @kueda per https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/150184151 I did hit a snag…
@raymie and @data_nerd for possible pro/con interest too.

If the system could be set to “reverse polarity” for taxon 43584, automarking them as affirmatively “yes, wild” vs default “not wild”, that could probably go pretty far as a fix for the underlying issues.

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-livestock that are free-roaming and aren’t bound by fencing or pens – captive. They are there because people put them there and are more or less keeping them there, though the “cage” is large.

-ALL diseases and parasites, whether on captive or wild plants/animals – wild

-cats or birds (pigeons, chickens, etc) that can go anywhere but come back to a garden or house at night – captive cultivated, though sometimes hard to recognize.

-algae/snails/worms/etc in a home aquarium that were not introduced to it on purpose – wild, but explain the situation

-garden plant spreading vegetatively beyond cultivation through runners or rhizomes (but importantly, not by seed) – wild, if they’ve moved beyond the garden.

-honeybees in an orchard that come from managed hives – technically captive/cultivated but I can’t ever tell where they came from so I always mark them wild.

-finding an animal in a vehicle/storage container/etc (e.g. driving to California from Pennsylvania and finding a living spotted lanternfly in your car) – wild. I think you can mark it as located where you find it. But then please kill it, if it’s a spotted lanternfly, and comment that you killed it so people don’t panic and start searching for it or blanket the area in pesticides.

-captive-release animals that constantly stay in the vicinity of the release site – Their choice. Wild.

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I have an observation of a starfish unintentionally in an aquarium that has the biggest DQA war I’ve ever seen, currently captive but hoping to turn the tables.

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That pretty much depends on the local context. In Canada ranchers often have the right to graze their cattle on Crown (government/public) land. Often the herd is released in the spring and left to its own devices till later in the year. All of the cattle are still considered to be the property of the rancher and are therefore not wild. My understanding is that truly feral cattle are rare in Canada.

Horses are also often released to graze on Crown land. Unlike cattle, though there are established populations of feral horses here so telling them apart can be difficult.

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For animals that were rehabilitated wild animals or animals that were deliberately bred to be released, I would count them as wild.

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Under what circumstances should a human be considered wild?

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When they are raised by wolves :smile: :laughing:

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All humans are considered wild on iNat, except prisoners or hostages.

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