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.

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.

In the wild? Bald Eagle.

Tanuki

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

I saw my first Praying Mantis yesterday.

Probably my cat. There's only one of her.

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!

Polar Bear this year in Southern Greenland

Not super rare, but a wolverine

Not sure how rare they are, but I've seen wild crested caracaras a few times.

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

For me it has to be an Arctic Blue Fox. Saw several on a trip to the Aleutian Islands. Not really rare or endangered, but as someone who lives well south of their territory it was certainly a rare thing for me.

There was an albino red fox that lived on a golf course near where I work, I I would see it running along the fence about once a week.

Recently caught a firefly for a few seconds to relive my childhood of catching jars full of them as a night light. I let him go, and was sad that he was so alone; there were only a few flashes in a field where I used to see thousands...

Quokka on Rottnest Island (Western Australia)?

Followed by trying to stop fuckwits from playing "quokka soccer". 🤭

Red squirrel

I once got to meet a Tasmanian Devil baby at a zoo. The zookeeper was carrying him around in a little pouch to keep him comfy while his mom was getting a vet checkup. (The picture is one I found on google because the picture I took is buried in some backup folder from about 6 phones ago)

I was at the old job, staring mournfully out the window at the world free of this drudgery, and - lo and behold - I see a black weasel-like animal galumph into view and disappear down a breezeway.

I couldn't believe my eyes, as this was on Vancouver Island where we have no black weasels.

I looked it up, and apparently there were some mink farms in the area, and they shut down due to one or more problems, so now there's a resilient invasive mink population up near Camosun and the old Insane Asylum.

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

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.

I saw a big white owl. It looks like as tall as a toddler. Then it flew away before I can even react.

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.

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

I remember seeing a Liger at the zoo when I was kid.

When I was a kid, on a trip to Paris, I went to the zoo, and the highlight of the whole trip was seeing an Aldabra giant tortoise (listed as vulnerable by IUCN). Now, even when this was 1990, I was still like "ooooooo cool turt". I didn't expect the buddy to jump around and munch pizza. Just a tortoise doing tortoise things slowly.

(The other highlight of the trip was seeing a public Minitel terminal. Holy shit guys, we were only mildly approaching that level in Finland.)

Endangered Monk seal when I was snorkeling in Hawaii. Dude was just suddenly there! Saw sea turtles and plenty of fish. Like some finding Nemo shit.

Kemps Ripley sea turtles

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.

When entering the Everglades NP my girlfriend and I were handed one of those folded maps with info on the park. Early 90's BTW. We went to a campground and set up our tent then soon decided to drive out of the park to buy groceries. On the drive out we saw a convertible pulled over to the side of the road, it's occupants looking at something. We looked and I saw the back end of a large cat walking away. My first impression was who could abandon a cat here? It will get eaten by alligators. Soon I realized it was no ordinary house cat. The brochure we were given stated there were nine known Florida panthers left in the million acre park.