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.

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!

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.

Tanuki

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.

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

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

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.

Might not fit in this thread but here goes.

My family used to have a cabin that was at a lake several hours out in the mountains and pretty isolated except for a few rich people who lived up there. Place was, and I shit you not, infested with Sasquatches.

Every 4th of July I would go up there to watch the rich people light off their fireworks and immediately after, I had found a logging trail that a large group of them would gather with their babies and all. I think to watch the fireworks. They’d let me get a little bit closer every year until my family sold the cabin. The last time I went there I took a couple friends and they chased us out of the forest until a car’s headlights scared them off… That’s also the most scared I’ve ever been.

For obvious reasons I don’t want to share the location of this lake…

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.

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

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

Polar Bear this year in Southern Greenland

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.)

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.