Silkenweb Example: Hackernews Clone

First Known Photographs of Living Specimens

123 points by Morizero 3 months ago | 43 comments

rex_lupi 3 months ago
It's sad that most of the commenters here did not care to read the "About" section of the project:
>This project is designed to showcase the first known photographs of living specimens of any species. Note that by 'first known' I'm referring to the first known photographs of a species anywhere, not just the first photographs to be submitted to iNaturalist.
>Two types of observation will be included: 1) First photographic records of undescribed species... 2) First photographic records of already described (but obviously relatively uncommon or cryptic) species...
>If the male and female of a species are sexually dimorphic, then both are valid to be added to the project. So too if a species has distinct life stages (eg caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly), they are all valid to be separately added to the project (assuming the other rules apply).
>If you see an observation currently in the project that you know is not the first photograph of that species, and you can show the earlier photograph, please do not hesitate to message me and I'll remove it.
It clearly states the photograph has to be the first photograph someone ever taken of the species which they have published(journal/news/book etc.) or publicly shared. Also, historical pictures are welcome, as long as you took the picture. I have seen scanned images uploaded to the project dating back to the 1960s.
- almostnormal 3 months ago
  Calling it "oldest" instead of "first known" would have avoided most of the confusion.
  - culi 3 months ago
    I'm not sure if the HN article title was changed but the iNaturalist title of the Project is "First Known Photographs of Living Specimens"
shabadoo75 3 months ago
I know the guy that created that project, he's also published a paper on how important and valuable it's been for species monitoring and conservation https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10841-021-00350-7
madpen 3 months ago
Within the context of iNaturalist. Anyhow, cheers to the iNaturalist team, the work they do and their Seek app. It’s one of the only apps I recommend friends to give to their children to explore, appreciate, and learn about the natural world around them. I just hope they stay relevant in the ChatGPT world. TBH I often use a combination of the two when trying to ID something out in the wild, and ChatGPT many times does a better job.
- Helmut10001 3 months ago
  > Within the context of iNaturalist.
  No, he/she meas everywhere:
  > Note that by 'first known' I'm referring to the first known photographs of a species anywhere, not just the first photographs to be submitted to iNaturalist.
  - Nition 3 months ago
    No, it's confusing but as far as I can tell what they're saying there is that if a species was ever photographed anywhere before, outside of iNaturalist, that species can't be part of the project at all. It's a page for people on iNaturalist who have captured the first known photo of a species.
    - devb 3 months ago
      > but as far as I can tell
      Did you actually look at the details? It's literally in rule #1:
      > 1 . Any observations you add must be the first photograph(s) of that species anywhere. If an observation is the first one for that species to be uploaded to iNat, but other photos of that species from an earlier point in time already exist anywhere elsewhere online/in print, then that observation should not be added to the project. This is the biggest source of observations that I have to remove from the project. So your observation must be both the first photograph of that species on iNat and also the first anywhere.
- specproc 3 months ago
  Big, big love for iNat. Up there with Wikipedia as an Internet treasure.
  Spring is coming on here and it's getting a lot of use in our house! Don't even have kids.
  I'd defend it over ChatGPT if you're prepared to wait. So many knowledgeable people using it. A classic example of the best way to get a correct answer being to post a wrong one!
- kelseydh 3 months ago
  What steps do you recommend for IDing a weird bug or slug you find in the wild? Do you just upload a photo to chatgpt? What's the equivalent with iNaturalist?
4ugSWklu 3 months ago
I hope that someone gets a photo of Crump’s Mouse one day.
Tewboo 3 months ago
Absolutely fascinating to see the earliest images of living organisms. Capturing life in such a way was a groundbreaking moment in science.
Nition 3 months ago
This seems like such a cool idea for a website, but then it's let down by the fact that it's actually First Known Photographs of Living Specimens Posted To INaturalist.com. I thought it'd be a bunch of photos from the 1800s but it's a bunch of photos from the 2020s.
For example here is the actual first known photo of a domestic cat: https://i.imgur.com/OKtFMos.jpeg
- mutagen 3 months ago
  From the About Section of the page:
  This project is designed to showcase the first known photographs of living specimens of any species. Note that by 'first known' I'm referring to the first known photographs of a species anywhere, not just the first photographs to be submitted to iNaturalist.
  Two types of observation will be included: 1) First photographic records of undescribed species e.g. this Gasteracantha sp. 2) First photographic records of already described (but obviously relatively uncommon or cryptic) species e.g. this wasp fly.
  If the male and female of a species are sexually dimorphic, then both are valid to be added to the project. So too if a species has distinct life stages (eg caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly), they are all valid to be separately added to the project (assuming the other rules apply).
  Please only add observations depicting live organisms; this therefore excludes specimens such as pinned insects.
  If you see an observation currently in the project that you know is not the first photograph of that species, and you can show the earlier photograph, please do not hesitate to message me and I'll remove it.
  - Steuard 3 months ago
    I think that the previous poster's point is that historical photographs are not in-scope to be added to this project: for example, this project will never include the first known photo of a living platypus (or a living cat, as noted), because such photos existed before this project began. The project collects photos posted to iNaturalist that meet the specified criteria.
    It's a cool collection of modern observations of rare or remote species! But the title could also describe an entirely different research project, focused on historical media rather than modern exploration. That could also be very cool.
    - rendall 3 months ago
      > ...historical photographs are not in-scope to be added to this project... because such photos existed before this project began.
      That contradicts what the website itself says:
      > This project is designed to showcase the first known photographs of living specimens of any species. Note that by 'first known' I'm referring to the first known photographs of a species anywhere, not just the first photographs to be submitted to iNaturalist.
      > If you see an observation currently in the project that you know is not the first photograph of that species, and you can show the earlier photograph, please do not hesitate to message me and I'll remove it.
- jeremyjh 3 months ago
  No, its pretty clear that only first known photographs can be added. If a picture of the species exists in a book somewhere, its not eligible for the project.
- mattigames 3 months ago
  The quality of that photo is so bad that it arguably hardly counts as anything, I cannot even understand it's head position. I bet most people wouldn't recognize it as a cat unless you tell them first that its supposed to be one.
  - walrus01 3 months ago
    This is a very uninformed comment if you understand even the most rudimentary of the problems involved in early photography and the history of the daguerrotype and photograph, specifically, that exposures needed to be multiple seconds long to capture an image.
    - mattigames 3 months ago
      Yes I know about exposure, this isn't about the technical qualms of any giving photograph but the utility it has for the general public by being smudged to this degree.
    - andrewflnr 3 months ago
      The real problem looks like glare, at least to my rudimentarily informed eye.
  - Nition 3 months ago
    The head is on the far left, drinking from the saucer.
  - msephton 3 months ago
    So only "good" first photos should count?
    - mattigames 3 months ago
      Non-smudged photos yeah, otherwise you could say any smudge of colors is any animal you claim.
nxpnsv 3 months ago
That's so cool, I live close to a bug only observed once!
a3w 3 months ago
Is homo sapiens in there?
- culi 3 months ago
  On iNaturalist, a Homo sapiens species would automatically be marked as "casual" meaning its not eligible to be a "research-grade" observation
  Anyhow species that were first photographed outside of iNaturalist would not be eligible for this project. It is possible however to upload an observation that happened many years ago (even before iNaturalist existed)
  - rex_lupi 3 months ago
    >Anyhow species that were first photographed outside of iNaturalist would not be eligible...
    To clarify, it would be eligible if the photograph has not been published (i.e. made available publicly outside of iNat) and you own the license.
    If you had taken the first-known pics of an animal a few decades ago, and posted them on Facebook earlier, you can still add them to this project, as they fulfill all the technical requirements.
bobsmooth 3 months ago
No photos of humans interestingly.
- paulluuk 3 months ago
  They're not exactly "relatively uncommon or cryptic"
  - a3w 3 months ago
    > This project is designed to showcase the first known photographs of living specimens of any species.
    Where does it say they need to be rare?
    - paulluuk 3 months ago
      From the page linked:
      > First photographic records of already described (but obviously relatively uncommon or cryptic) species
    - amanaplanacanal 3 months ago
      Humans have been photographed before and are therefore out of scope.