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Comment by Nition | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

> ...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.

Both statements are in fact correct and non-contradictory. It's confusing, but I believe what they mean in the guidelines is that there are two criteria

- The photos must be on iNaturalist

- The photo must be the first photo of the species ever, not just the first photo on iNaturalist

That is, if a species was ever photographed anywhere before, outside of iNaturalist, that species can't be part of the project, ever.

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.

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.

So only "good" first photos should count?

Non-smudged photos yeah, otherwise you could say any smudge of colors is any animal you claim.

It's Bigfoot!

Now I'm wondering what was the first viral fake photo of big foot

I mean, the photo is clearly a cat drinking milk from a saucer.

Details and alternative cat photos that are as old (which is "first" is unknown) https://workman.tumblr.com/post/120829319747/houghtonlib-hou...

"clearly" is such a stretch, this photo would be completely useless to someone who has never seen a cat before, they wouldn't learn to recognize it from such picture alone, the other photos you linked do look a lot better.

The head is on the far left, drinking from the saucer.

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.

The real problem looks like glare, at least to my rudimentarily informed eye.

Lenses and optics in general were also extremely rudimentary at that time, it looks to me like a combination of the cat moving during an 8 second exposure and a hand-ground lens.

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.

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