Polar Bear on the Hudson Bay coast in northern Ontario.

I’m Indigenous and I’ve gone hunting and trapping with my relatives a few times in my life. On one of those trips we happened on a polar bear on the mud flats of the bay during the late autumn. We drove by in our freighter canoe (a very large oversized canoe with a 60 HP outboard motor) and the bear swam near us and then walked by a few hundred feet away. It wasn’t afraid but we were. We watched for a while and then fired rifle shot into the mud next to it to scare it away. From the moment it started to run to the point it disappeared as a speck on the horizon was about a minute or two. I went up later to look at the prints and the clay mud looked like a tractor had driven over it. I couldn’t believe how fast it could move on the mud. I quickly sank in my boots and could barely walk around.

One paw print was about the size of my head. I never left camp without someone nearby or a rifle in my hands.

Tarsier

A wild beaver like a few miles from my house, and not a nutria, a real life flat-tailed beaver toothed fucking beaver. I was going to an artificial dam I use as a fishing spot and there he was. It was way bigger than I thought but I didn’t want to disturb it so I turned around and went home.

In captivity? An Okapi? A rhino? Idk man I’ve been to many zoos and exotic zoos where you drive through and idk about the rarest.

I traveled to one of the most remote places on the planet, drove hours on dirt roads, hiked another hour through deafening wind, and then crawled on my stomach to the edge of a a 1300’ cliff, and hung off of it it just to take a picture of a puffin with my cell phone.

There was a stray firefly at my house one night. Like, singular. We’re not even near their habitat, so I don’t know what’s up with that.

Probably Hercules the Liger. Terrifyingly enormous animal–pictures do not do justice to how intimidating a predator of that mass is.

I got a brief but good look at a wild Jaguarundi in south Texas nearly twenty years ago. I thought it was a bobcat at first, but it turned so I could see its tail and profile, and there was no mistaking it.

Probably a Takahē in New Zealand but in captivity.

In the wild: Florida scrub jay. key deer. carracarra. Indigo racer. I don’t know how to determine what is rarest. There are a lot I have seen.

My cat is a very special boy and there’s no other cat like him. Does that count?

Giant Panda and Red Panda maybe.

In captivity: probably red wolves, or some critically endangered birds at the National Aviary.

In the wild: probably some plants endemic to Catalina Island.