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.
I saw a big white owl. It looks like as tall as a toddler. Then it flew away before I can even react.
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?
Not super rare, but a wolverine
I’m big into (responsible) nature tourism and I believe Mountain gorillas are the most rare. Black rhinos are also pretty critically endangered but there’s successful breeding programs at zoos for them so I would think they’re less threatened.
I went to the Galapagos once and some of the islands have some very rare species. But their habitat is protected and isolated so it’s not like endangered species that are threatened by habitat loss or war or whatever.
Probably a California Condor at the San Diego Zoo.
In my area,
Pheasants and peacocks
Quokka on Rottnest Island (Western Australia)?
Followed by trying to stop fuckwits from playing “quokka soccer”. 🤭
Saw a lynx cross the road ahead of us in the Yukon.
Kemps Ripley sea turtles
Orcas, maybe?
I don’t even know what the rarest animal I would have seen in person is, considering many zoos and aquariums have endangered species in their care and I like going to them. I went to the Sacramento zoo over this last weekend, too.
In the wild, though? Could either be orcas or grizzly bears.
Not sure how rare they are, but I’ve seen wild crested caracaras a few times.
African penguins maybe? They’re endangered. I took my partner to feed them at an aviary.
I feel like I’ve seen a black rhino before, maybe at the San Diego zoo as a kid or something. Those are critically endangered, all but one subspecies extinct.
Desert tortoise, and an old one at that. Was bigger than a basketball.
Probably wild camels in central Australia or a platypus when I was young.