Live on the globe now: 200 tracked
This layer plots recent wildlife and plant sightings on the globe, each dot marking where someone photographed a living thing and logged it to iNaturalist. The data comes straight from the iNaturalist API, pulling the newest research-grade observations — sightings whose species ID has been confirmed by the community — that carry both a location and at least one photo. The feed refreshes about every two minutes, so you are looking at fresh observations posted by citizen scientists around the world, ordered newest first. Up to roughly 600 recent sightings sit on the globe at once. Click any one to inspect it: you get the common and scientific name, the broad taxon group (birds, insects, plants, fungi, mammals and so on), the place it was recorded, the observer's username, the date observed, the photo, and a direct link back to the full observation on iNaturalist. Because it depends on where people are out looking and uploading, the pattern leans toward populated and well-surveyed regions rather than being an even sample of nature. This is one of about 29 live layers you can switch on over the same interactive Earth — distinct from the NASA EONET natural-events layer, which tracks volcanoes and storms rather than individual species.
Data source: iNaturalist
Every sighting is a real observation uploaded to iNaturalist (inaturalist.org) by its community of citizen scientists. We query the public iNaturalist API for the most recent research-grade observations that have a location and a photo.
The feed refreshes roughly every two minutes and shows the newest observations first, so you are seeing sightings logged within the last hours, not a static archive.
On iNaturalist, an observation becomes research-grade when the community agrees on its species identification and it has a date, location and media. We only plot those, so the names you see are vetted rather than unconfirmed guesses.
The map reflects where people observe and upload, not where wildlife actually is. Densely populated and heavily birded or botanized areas show far more dots, so think of it as a map of human observation effort as much as of species.