What's the rarest animal you've ever seen?
Can be either rare to your area in general or just rare in the sense that not many even exist to begin with.
Mine is a flying squirrel. They only come out at night and are naturally hard to see just by default, but last year one came to my suet feeder a few times and I was lucky to see it in the porch light.
Not my pic but he looked pretty much just like this with the thick tail and big eyes.
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Pretty sure I saw a whooping crane once.
Only exist in 4 islands in the Balkans, came across a big dead on during a hike, it was about 24 inches long.
It was hefty too, pretty thick and heavy, it was during late spring and the bushes were full of partridge chicks scurrying around so plenty of prey around for them.
Saw some of these guys. Mauritius Olive White-eye. Critically endangered and endemic to a small patch of forest in Mauritius which is already a tiny country. Only about 200-300 estimated to be left
>Olive White-eye
Well, can’t say it wasn’t named appropriately
A Shetland cow! There are less than 300 left on the planet.
>There are less than 300 left on the planet.
There's no way that's true.
It's not true, and that pic isn't even a Shetland cow. No idea what that anon is smoking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_cattle
>There are currently 800 registered breeding cows and an average of 180 calves born each year
That's a highland cow not a Shetland cow, and there's loads of them
Orange-bellied Parrot, they live where I grew up. Only a few in the wild these days
I was just knocked over by his extreme cuteness.
A bald eagle in northeast Georgia
I literally saw two yesterday in Delaware. They're all over the fricking place here
https://baytobaynews.com/stories/bald-eagles-soaring-in-delaware,83183
i want to believe i saw a pack of dire wolves kill an elk outside of Estes Colorado from my grandfathers summerhome in 2008, the biggest of them had to be about 4'3 at the shoulder but most of the pack were a little over 3 feet tall. they looked like gray wolves but where a bit brighter grays and didnt appear to have any brown or beige marking. it couldn't have been and mostly likely was a pack of gray wolves my child mind contorted but to me they dont really look the same. iv seen them in enclosures and in pictures and they still dont match exactly what i remember
Dire wolves aren't actually bigger than wolves basically at all, and their main differences are mostly color and head shape. Grey wolves are HUGE. Still very rare to see a pack of wolves period, though.
Arowana? Maybe?
Local Chinese restaurant used to have a frickhugeic one in their tank. I've mentioned it before and I think Wauf told me they're illegal in the US so either they were breaking the law or I mistook some other weird-looking humongofish for an arowana.
Haven't been to that place in 15 years so I don't know if they're even still there never mind if the fish is.
Asian arowanas were illegal for a while, but they started captive breeding them in the 90's so those are ok to own now. Expensive though.
if it was a chinese place it was probably added to the menu
I was visiting my aunt's rural home years ago and saw a cougar walk across her front lawn. This was in Aitkin, Minnesota.
>Statewide, the DNR has only verified 77 cougar appearances in the state since 2004
I had no idea they were this rare here. It even lists them as "extinct or severely reduced population." I feel very lucky.
I was walking my dog at night in central Florida and we came upon an armadillo. I'd never seen one before. We just kinda followed it for a while, as it scrounged around in the dirt. I'm not even sure the stupid thing was aware of me and my dog. Eventually we got bored and left. I've since seen several 'dillos.
They look so prehistoric, I can never get over it.
from west FL, armadillo are pretty common in FL from what I understand. seen them a few times, they sound like a tank walking across the driveway at night
I had one get in my house once and I shot it with a pellet gun
I'm just going to count my area.
I've seen both a flying squirrel and a fisher cat on my trail cam, fishers dont officially range in this area anymore, so it was interesting.
The fire bug I guess. Maybe not rare globally but is supposed to be rare in my home country
It was probably introduced there from Europe, in Europe these are everywhere and are as common as flies.
Some kind of weasel thing, he got in the garage and attacked my dad's boot.
I heard condors are migrating up the west coast and settling into northern regions. Someone at a wildlife refuge told me he hopes he'll see them in Oregon some day. I don't know, but I'd like to see one.
They are being released in Northern California. You might get lucky, but the numbers are still so small.
A good person
Shut up moron
you're kind of proving his point
I saw a golden coqui. They're not really rare on the island, but the fact you can't find them anywhere but Puerto Rico so I made it something I had to see during my trip. The golden part was pure luck.
>They're not really rare on the island,
they're literally extinct
Scientists think it's possibly extinct because it hasn't been seen or documented for over 40 years and you say it's supposedly "not really rare on the island"
At least make it believable it takes 10 seconds to Google something.
California Condor which are critically endangered
Florida Scrub Jay, Bonnethead shark, and Blue whale which are endangered
Great tailed Grackle in Florida (first specimen ever recorded in the state)
Probably not "rare" by the standard definition but I only ever saw this guy once in the wild and not in a zoo and that was only because I went out for a walk at night.
Where in Australia are you? I've seen these guys many times, including during the day, and I'm in suburban brissie. Very common here
I've seen a koala quite a few times
In the wild btw
Almost always at night and accidentally, walking through forest and parkland
One time I was going to get a kebab at 11 pm and one of them was lugging itself up a tree as it saw me, then kind of stared at me when it thought it was far up enough to be safe from me (I'm no danger anyway lol)
You can also hear the horny male koalas a lot in the forest. They sound very unlike you would expect a moronic herbivorous teddy bear to sound.
Probably this one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_green_macaw
Theres a bunch of these guys visiting very regularly too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_American_squirrel_monkey
Thylacine. Australian government firebombs areas they're reported in, so everyone keeps their mouth shut but they're still around.
>Australian government firebombs areas they're reported in,
wtf why
Mining rights. If thylacines were confirmed to exist, they'd have to be protected.
That's ridiculous, why would the aussies not protect such an important animal just for some mining rights?
Thylacines dont get you much money if you're the .gov. Probably wouldn't even bring much more tourists, because they wouldnt see them anyways. Mining companies on the other hand give you a bunch of tax revenue and mining lobbyists pay for your next election campaign.
They are still very much alive in both tasmania and new guinea.
Let's say we discovered a thylacine tomorrow. The first thing that would happen is a swarm of news media and enviromental activists descending on Tasmania, demanding that half the island be closed off to economic activity. The Australian government, on the other hand, has conducted numerous studies on the thylacine's long term viability, and they all come up with "it's either dead already or it will die out soon". So the official position is to help the extinction along.
It's pretty much the same story with sasquatch. You hear about logging companies fighting guerilla tactics against them because if they were revealed to the public millions of square miles of forest would become protected and the loggers would go out of business.
I got a picture of mine
California Condor, ~300 in the wild. Other birds I have seen are rare just because you have to go out of your way to find them, like Gyrfalcon.
Hmmm, I guess the blue iguana. They’re endangered (but doing better) and we have the only ones on the planet. I myself haven’t seen one in the wild for years. Very beautiful
Jesus that’s blue.
Not a rare species but a rare individual, i saw what i'm pretty sure was a melanistic pidgeon when i went to college. Even its legs and beak were black
On the rare-species note, I once saw a fire-bellied toad in a ditch in the US
homie pigeon
I've seen black squirrels only twice in my whole life.
Really? They're all over the place where I live.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_fox
>Current estimates of the total population are still low, with an estimated minimum 227 individuals on the mainland and 412 on Chiloé Island.
Damn. I never even heard of this animal before. Nice find.
It looked exactly the same as a regular south American gray fox except a bit darker and I saw it from afar when I was visiting the island, so it might as well just be one. It was still cool tho