Not super rare, but a wolverine

Giant hornet. Easily 4 inches long. I have no idea what it was doing in California.

That really bad taxidermy lion that was / is a meme.

Wild turkey.

Desert tortoise, and an old one at that. Was bigger than a basketball.

A white tiger.

Captive animals, I’ve seen countless exotic animals. Wild animals are a cooler experience.

A wild black bear in the northern Lower Peninsula.

A loggerhead sea turtle in Calibogue Sound.

A baby Atlantic bottle nose dolphin riding waves at a beach in South Carolina.

I saw a group of 25k redhead ducks together floating on Lake St. Clair in 2022.

Not rare animals, but the sight was. I saw a bull shark eat a sea gull that was floating on the water.

I also saw a dead alligator that was bloating up from rot get stuck on the bow of a boat on the Savannah river. A guy tried to kick it off and his foot went through it and it was the most putrid thing I’ve ever seen.

If we’re including captive animals, the one that stands out the most to me is a Chaco Owl. It’s not considered endangered yet, but it’s only found in one particular area of the world, at the borders of Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.

In the wild, I’ve come across porcupines on a few occasions, and I almost had a fisher cat run up my leg. I didn’t know we even had them in my state, so I was very freaked out as to what this long, furry thing coming at me was. I wish I had maintained my composure so I could have gotten a better look at it, but it’s also the kind of thing in glad we figured out what each other was before I was in biting range!

I got to see one of the last few white rhinos.

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.

Hmm, I am not sure I’ve seen anything rare, though we do have some animals in Florida that I don’t think are everywhere, have seen wild manatees and alligators, those enormous Sandhill Cranes and pink spoonbills, lots of lizards and snakes.

The animal I have personally seen, but most rarely though, is a fox. Have only seen one wild fox in my over 50 years.

Little blue heron. Not so much rare but very rarely seen here.

A bobcat. It casually sauntered through the neigborhood and hung out at a local park. I watched it for about five minutes from about 30 feet away.

No idea. But if I were to randomly guess, I’d say it was a bison during their endangered days.