I got to see one of the last few white rhinos.
I once got to meet a Tasmanian Devil baby at a zoo. The zookeeper was carrying him around in a little pouch to keep him comfy while his mom was getting a vet checkup. (The picture is one I found on google because the picture I took is buried in some backup folder from about 6 phones ago)
When I saw them in the wild their faces were covered in tumours. Sure would have been cute without those though. I think our tour guide might have said it was due to intra floral/fauna contamination between species like these who were historically isolated.
A lot of “tumors” seen on wild animals are fungal infections from invasive fungal species brought by humans. It really sucks because fungal infections are very hard for mammalian immune systems to fight without help from antifungal medications.
When I was a kid, on a trip to Paris, I went to the zoo, and the highlight of the whole trip was seeing an Aldabra giant tortoise (listed as vulnerable by IUCN). Now, even when this was 1990, I was still like “ooooooo cool turt”. I didn’t expect the buddy to jump around and munch pizza. Just a tortoise doing tortoise things slowly.
(The other highlight of the trip was seeing a public Minitel terminal. Holy shit guys, we were only mildly approaching that level in Finland.)
Polar Bear this year in Southern Greenland
Did you poop your pants and play dead?
I was on a boat, about 10 meters away. It’s actually illegal to be closer than 250m but try telling that to a Greenlandic skipper who wants to show you something that even locals have rarely seen.
He sure is a chonky boi.
For me it has to be an Arctic Blue Fox. Saw several on a trip to the Aleutian Islands. Not really rare or endangered, but as someone who lives well south of their territory it was certainly a rare thing for me.
Little blue heron. Not so much rare but very rarely seen here.
I remember seeing a Liger at the zoo when I was kid.
That really bad taxidermy lion that was / is a meme.
It’s been a lot of years since I’ve been anywhere with wild animals …. But I live in an urban area and am amazed by how regularly i see coyotes. I’m used to thinking of rats, pigeons, and squirrels as adjusted to city life, but I guess coyotes are becoming so too
Before that, maybe i saw a right whale on a long ago whale watch?
Endangered Monk seal when I was snorkeling in Hawaii. Dude was just suddenly there! Saw sea turtles and plenty of fish. Like some finding Nemo shit.
Probably my cat. There’s only one of her.
This goes back to around 2000. Snake hunting in the Everglades middle of the night, my friend and I saw a black panther. I know, I know, impossible, Florida doesn’t have them etc etc etc. we both saw it clear as in a zoo in the floodlights of his truck. 100% big cat, 100% black.
Saw a hulking Florida Panther on a lonely creek in NW FL. Wikipedia says there’s only a small population in the very south.
I have a shirt of a black panther holding a shotgun.
Me and a bunch of guys saw a lynx at a remote airstrip in western Australia.
I remember driving around Florida and seeing a sign with a panther on it. It might have said panther crossing or it just implied it. Wish I could remember where it was.
Plenty evidence of them in the UK, I see no reason they couldn’t be in Florida!
Wild turkey.
My buddy is an entomologist and one time I tagged along while he went to collect beatles in the highlands. When we got back to the lab one of the specimens I had collected turned out to be a species that was thought to be extinct in the region and hadn’t been spotted in a very long time. He was wildly jealous
You found Pete Best?
Underrated
Probably a mole. Not rare in itself, but as they mainly chill in their caves, seeing one by just walking on an official track in a forest is probably relatively rare. The cute fella just stuck his head out, and before I couldn’t really react, he apparently already heard me and vanished again.
