Do you keep 'species seen' lists?

[red river hog]

I just finished adding all the species from the Bronx and my current numbers are as follows:

Mammals: 209
Birds: 255
Reptiles: 199
Amphibians: 44
Fishes: 319
Invertebrates: 85

 

[15399]

Yes. I keep lifelists for mammals, birds, and reptiles. I only started keeping these lists about a year ago, so they are not very long yet (I have only four institutions in this time). I only list non-domesticated species that I find in zoos, aquariums, etc. I do not keep track of wild species and have not included species I saw prior to starting this list. In a few weeks I will be going to two new zoos for the first time and have the potential to add plenty of new species to the list.

Mammals- 60 species
Birds- 69 species
Reptiles- 34 species

 

[Hipporex]

I definitely have a life list. I keep track of all animals (both wild and captive) but I've only started keeping track of non-mammals relatively recently so their numbers are far lower than what I've actually seen. I'm currently at:

• 273 mammal species
• 230 bird species
• 153 reptile species
• 35 amphibian species
• 136 fish species
• 83 invertebrate species
• (a mere 68 of these are from the wild)
• 910 animals species total.

*I've linked it elsewhere on Zoochat but if anyone wants to see what I've seen I can link the list here too.

It has been a while since my last post in this thread and I've seen a fair amount of animal species since then so here are the updated stats:

This equals a grand total of 1,144 species.

 

[Hipporex]

Okay I'm not gonna lie to you guys, I'm just did something a little dumb and crazy. It involves changing perhaps the most important part of my life...
My species list.
First let me clarify by saying I'm still keeping ahold of my former list (which I've dubbed the sacred texts) but all the animals on there will be deemed "past records" and no longer apart of my official tally. The fact that so many of my species as not photographed, coupled with my horrible memory, means that I keep doubting myself on it I actually saw a species or if the place and date I've listed are accurate. As a result, I've starting fresh. Is this an incredibly stupid idea? Yes. Do I care? No. Anyway, my new list started the morning of August 14, 2021 and here are my seen species stats by the end of that day (I visited the SF Zoo this day):

Total: 154 species.

I intend to post an updated chart every year on August 14th to track my progress.

 

[WhistlingKite24]

Inspired by @Hipporex's use of graphs, I created a few of them as well to have a visual representation of where I am currently at with my life list.

Mammals:

Not surprisingly, the native mammals are the main groups represented with 41 species of marsupial and 3 species of monotreme. A very odd coincidence is that I am currently on exactly 22 species for three orders! I have plenty of opportunities to add more Australian species for my list (both wild and captive) as well as a handful of exotic mammals. Caracals and a few of the remnant primates in Australia spring to mind.



Birds:

My growing interest in birdwatching has allowed me to pick up several new of families of passerine (e.g. flowerpeckers, white eyes, cisticolas) in particular over the past six months. I hope to see several of these groups of birds grow soon especially with migratory wader season coming up soon. Edit: Motacillidae should only be one species and swifts should have been split into their own order.





Reptiles:

I am relatively pleased with the exotic species seen; seven tortoise species and five boas is pretty good considering the poor exotic diversity in Australia generally. I can certainly do better for native species though!


Amphibians:

This has always been a small group of species for me. I added poison dart frogs last year and two species from Myobatrachidae the year before that.

 

[HungarianBison]

I only count separate species, that are not domesticated.
I've seen 207 mammal species:
1 Monotrematan
14 Marsupials
3 Dermopteran
4 Xenathran
47 Primates
40 Carnivores
1 Aardvark
2 Proboscids
8 Odd-toed ungulates
50 Even-toed ungulates
37 Rodents.
I will do a bird list once, but I won't do any other classes, because I don't know them.

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

3 Dermapteran species?

 

[HungarianBison]

I thought of bats, of course.

 

[Jambi]

I started a species seen list recently, but rather than thinking back to all of the times I've ever been to a zoo or try to remember every species, I've set the starting point as this year, and since I began I've visited two places, one zoo and one aquarium. I plan on visiting at least one more zoo or aquarium before the end of the year.

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

Just for fun; number of species I have seen in the wild
Monotremes 1
Marsupials 19
Tenrecs 1
Hyraxes 2
Elephants 2
Manatees 1
Armadillos 3
Sloths 2
Treeshrews 1
Colugos 1
Primates 52 (including Human)
Lagomorpha 13
Rodents 78
Insectivores 7
Bats 31
Cetaceans 8
Artiodactyla 61
Perissodactyls 4
Pinniped 10
Land Carnivores 44

Total 351

 

[carl the birder]

i do keep a life list. but only for mammals and birds in the wild. alos keep a swedish list for them
i have sean/heard 546 birds in the wild and 246 in sweden. hoping to break to 550 and 250 this year.
life list birds 2021
for mammals
i got around 120 last time i counted.

i now i have sean a around 150 ish fish in the wild but dont realy keep a list
going to start one for reptiles soon ish

 

[gulogulogulo]

I have been keeping a list of zoo animals since 2007, including subspecies. My up-to-date figures are as follows: -

Amphibians 137
Birds 976
Fish 20 (I only count rays and guitarfishes)
Mammals 699
Reptiles 289 (only been counting these for last 3 or so years)

I use an app called Bird Journal - which I also use for birdwatching - I have adapted it with my own lists for non-birds.

 

[PAKMan]

When I found out that other ZooChat members do this, I actually tried making a list myself. But it was a bit challenging because I tried going by memory from all the zoos I remember in my 33 years, plus it was tricky finding a comprehensive list of animals (Wikipedia has lists, but I really don't have the patience to go through all of them). Plus I've never kept track of non-mammals I've seen (most birds outside of birds of prey, reptiles outside of large ones, and fish outside of sharks don't really excite me). One of these days I do plan on creating a list; I plan on doing a zoo tour someday so maybe I'll make one before I do that.

 

[BerdNerd]

Here, I have created a graph that represents the number of species I have seen. I might create one for wild animals soon, but for now, here is the number of species I've seen in captivity.

 

[zoologicus]

I've often wanted to note all the captive species I've seen over the years, sometimes even going into zoo visits armed with a pen and a notepad, but I've never actually done it thus far which is a very deeply held regret of mine. How many species have I seen that I may never see again, how many rarities have I seen that I'll never know of?

I do, however, keep (rough) note of the wild species I see, so my next project over the next few days-weeks-what have you will be to go through my photos and try to salvage what I can of a species count from my documented zoo visits

 

[MRJ]

I don't keep a list of animals seen in zoos. I will take a list of animals when I go to a zoo in an out of the way place for my report here, as I know many here would be interested (see my reports in Botswana and Zimbabwe for instance).

However I do keep a wild list. It is kept on a spread sheet and ordered by Phylum, Class, Order and Family along one axis and by location and date along the other. It is now up to 1273 species. I hesitate to call it a life list as I have only maintained it for the last four years, although some records go back a lot longer than that.

I do think keeping lists is an excellent way to add to the hobby, though.

 

[15399]

How many species have I seen that I may never see again, how many rarities have I seen that I'll never know of?

I feel this way too with my lifelist, which I started a little over a year ago. There are certain species, such as Bearded Pigs, Weid's Marmoset, and Parma Wallabies, that I've seen before I started my lifelist (so aren't on there), and likely I'll never see them again, at least not in the US.

 

[Aardwolf]

I keep a life-list for wild mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. For zoos, I have a photo collection, sort of like my own version of Joel Sartore's PhotoArk - four albums (again, mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian), with a single representative photo of each species that I've seen in a zoo or aquarium. I'm approaching 2000 species total for it.

 

[Fat-tailed dwarf lemur]

I started my list in August 2021. I keep this list only for mammals. As of now I have 370 species and subspecies. The rarest animals in my list (if you look at Europe) is the bornean bearded pig and the Abruzzo chamois. My list is translated in German and Ukrain (both are my mother languages), Latin and English of course!
If somebody want to see it:
Zoo Life List Since: 2021

 

[amur leopard]

Thought I'd do a bird breakdown because to me it's interesting seeing how the bird variety varies in Europe versus Australia for example:


Relative to Australia, there appear to be more waterfowl and birds of prey but fewer pigeons and shorebirds, pelicans, cormorants etc. relatively speaking.