[HN Gopher] iNaturalist
___________________________________________________________________
iNaturalist
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 513 points
Date : 2026-04-03 17:22 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inaturalist.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inaturalist.org)
| simonw wrote:
| The iNaturalist API is an absolute gem. It doesn't require
| authentication for read-only operations and it has open CORS
| headers which means it's amazing for demos and tutorials.
|
| My partner and I built this website with it a few years ago:
| https://www.owlsnearme.com/
|
| (I realize this is a bit on-brand for me but I also use it to
| track pelicans https://tools.simonwillison.net/species-
| observation-map#%7B%... )
| andrewpedelty wrote:
| I also love the Seek app that they provide (maybe this overlaps
| with the linked app in functionality?). As someone who's grown
| fonder of Nature in general over the last decade but who has
| little actual knowledge of the regional flora and fauna, it's a
| great way to engage with the plants and little bugs in my
| garden (or others' while on walks and such).
|
| Fun to travel and "pokemon" some new local stuff too.
| Tomte wrote:
| Seek throws up a ,,please don't disturb nature" modal at
| every single start that you need to click away. Usually at
| that point the bird has gone away, too.
|
| The iNaturalist app doesn't. It has more features, but Seek's
| former advantage ,,let me just the a photo and auto-identify"
| is now in the iNaturalist main app, as well, so it is my
| default now.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| >Seek throws up a ,,please don't disturb nature" modal at
| every single start that you need to click away.
|
| Frustration shared.
| throwanem wrote:
| So the modal is doing its job.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Sure, it's "doing its job" much in the way a podcast
| advert you've already heard 1000 times is "doing its
| job".
| throwanem wrote:
| I keep hearing people speak so positively of "friction,"
| lately, and yet. Some more nuance required in that
| discussion, I think.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Making the user completely inured to its message is not
| doing its job
| andrewpedelty wrote:
| That's great to know, I'll give it a shot for sure.
| zem wrote:
| wow, that would be my cue to uninstall the app and write
| zeros repeatedly over the place it used to be!
| ingonealan3 wrote:
| This guy deletes!
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| I've been pretty disappointed in the seeks applications
| ability to identify vegetation or insects. It seemed like it
| was really good a year or two ago and now I just seem to get
| so many bad predictions.
| chhxdjsj wrote:
| I stopped using seek and just started using gemini...
| Galanwe wrote:
| My son is now a fan of your site, thanks for sharing !
| jw_cook wrote:
| It is a gem. There are all kinds of fun location/organism-
| specific tools you can put together with the public read-only
| data, and owlsnearme is a good example of that. I just used it
| to check my area and learned there are snowy owls nearby, which
| is new to me!
|
| The iNat API certainly has some quirks and shortcomings, but in
| terms of usability it's uncommonly good compared to most
| biodiversity platforms. I maintain the python API client[1],
| which is used for data visualizations, doing useful things with
| your own observation data (which is how I got into it), Jupyter
| notebooks, Discord bots, and some research/education workflows.
|
| [1] https://github.com/pyinat/pyinaturalist
| martior wrote:
| And I made this silly game. Name the beast, where you get a
| picture and try to guess (or know) the scientific name.
| https://name-the-beast.skabb.com
| simonw wrote:
| OK I absolutely love that!
|
| I got 0/4 though on the easiest difficulty level. Feature
| request: a version where you have to guess the common name
| instead, I think that would still be fun.
| martior wrote:
| Yeah, I should do some more here, also let you pick
| families, or at least some pre-selected ones like birds,
| animals, plants. But there is so much more you can do, like
| spotted around me, or where I am going on vacation.
| is_true wrote:
| Maybe add the etymology of the words as clues would help
| 9dev wrote:
| Incredible. 7 owls near me! Thank you both for this, love it
| very much.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| I know this app!
|
| I once used it to check whether it would identify some birds
| that are prevalent in my area.
|
| Not related to the app's fubctionality, but it was pretty funny
| when I replayed my recording of parrot noises to crop it and
| the next moment, a walnut shell dropped from the tree above.
|
| Animals apparently don't like being recorded!
| Litost wrote:
| I use iNaturalist semi-regularly and was about to start using
| it for a rewilding project I'm involved in, so looked into that
| and some of the alternatives.
|
| I really like how easy it is to use, the various views on the
| data (incl. geofenced projects and places), the fact you can
| export it all back out again, the volunteer and "AI" assist on
| IDing stuff etc.
|
| But I guess the main other pro for me was that, in the UK at
| least, most of the data I've put into iNaturalist that's made
| Research Grade has also been imported into iRecord and NBNAtlas
| which wouldn't happen the other way round, so 3 for the price
| of 1. See https://nbn.org.uk/inaturalistuk/inaturalistuk-and-
| its-place...
|
| I know there's various grumblings about observation quality
| from iRecord users relating to iNaturalist records, but I'm
| assuming this is people just not following the published
| guidance???
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Love the owl website. Feedback/suggestion: when I clicked on
| use my location, it should show me all matches in a given
| radius of that location instead of waiting for me to fill
| something in the search box. The browser asked for permission
| and I allowed to share my location.
| two-sandwich wrote:
| This was a lifesaver around 2020 for me, documenting local
| critters and chatting about them. I've had immense satifaction in
| sharing my excitement for wildlife with others.
|
| Great app, easy interface, friendly community. Thank you
| iNaturalist team!
| justonceokay wrote:
| This app sparked a kind of existential change for me, also
| during the pandemic. I realized taking these long walks around
| Seattle that I didn't know almost any of the plants. The "ah
| ha" moment was that I realized at any point almost 50% of my
| visual field was dominated by things I didn't even know the
| names of. As a curious engineer this is not acceptable.
|
| So I would take walks and try to identify any plant I didn't
| know. The first day I didn't even make it around the block.
| Over the course of moths I got better and could go a few miles
| before spotting a (native) plant I had no idea about. Now I
| know when most flowers bloom, what's wdible, what's poisonous,
| what's related, and it's fun to share with other plant people
| too.
|
| Seattle is such a beautiful place to learn about plant life,
| since it is so temperate the city is like a world tree museum.
| Almost any kind of tree that doesn't prefer desert will grow
| here and people over the centuries have planted many unique and
| exotic varieties.
| daemonologist wrote:
| iNaturalist is cool, but it'd be a lot cooler if they released
| their models.
| frontierkodiak wrote:
| See my other comment in this thread! I've got you covered;
| launching open models in ~1month. Happy to answer any
| questions!
| contingencies wrote:
| Do you work for _iNaturalist_? If so, please clarify if this
| commitment is official and whether it includes the full build
| process to achieve replicable builds and input data not just
| a build artifact (which would not be replicable, and
| therefore not be Science under iNaturalist 's public interest
| Science tax-shelter status).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Similar category: Merlin Bird ID [1]. Uses audio to identify the
| birds around you.
|
| [1] https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
| derwiki wrote:
| Aaand if you like birds, Listers documentary is a lot of fun
| https://youtu.be/zl-wAqplQAo
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The funny thing is I got into birds because of the app. I
| hike alone often. Identifying the bird and then challenging
| myself to identify it correctly from memory going forward
| (before double checking with the app) is a fun game that
| draws one into the environment. Then, once you remember the
| bird (or, in my case, whatever nickname I came up with) you
| start learning and remembering facts about the bird.
| xandrius wrote:
| Yeah, birding can be such fun once you have a small
| repertoire of birds under your belt. Some people get that
| from their culture or family but I didn't, so made a little
| game to get me going.
|
| It's so satisfying to hear/see a bird and actually have a
| chance at getting it right
| ajkjk wrote:
| Even if you don't like birds... It's one of my favorite
| things I've ever watched.
| bix6 wrote:
| Best movie of the year hands down
| ajitid wrote:
| What a great documentary! Loved the pace of the documentary
| and the mix of visuals. Thanks for sharing.
| bobbiechen wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Merlin and learning more about its development
| changed my perspective on software development! I wrote about
| that here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/what-birdsong-and-
| backends-can...
| bikelang wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. I love Merlin but never knew how
| they got it to be so good. Blood, sweat, and tears - of
| course - as everything actually valuable and useful requires.
| nunez wrote:
| > The process of generating this data is labor intensive,
| because it requires sound ID experts to listen to each audio
| file carefully.
|
| Oh man. This is THE ONLY REASON why AI at scale works...and
| it's entirely powered by extremely repetitive classification
| done by people in third-world countries (for now; there are
| similar jobs in US and Canada for harder domains like math
| and law). It's definitely the biggest reason why autonomous
| driving works.
|
| (Cornell, who maintains Merlin, probably has students do it,
| though I know there is data crowdsourcing in the app too.)
|
| As far as I understand it, classification data is basically
| the Brent crude of the AI industry (well that and the
| datasets used for training LLMs).
|
| There was a great investigative article done by The Verge
| that built a piece around interviews of people at a data
| labelling center in Kenya and other African countries:
| https://www.theverge.com/features/23764584/ai-artificial-
| int....
|
| It paid well for the area until the company that spun up
| these services decided to move operations to SEA to save on
| cost. I'll try and link to it if I can find it.
|
| Here are similar articles on this topic:
|
| - https://www.vice.com/en/article/china-ai-dominance-relies-
| on...
|
| - https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-66514287
|
| - https://old.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1r7
| q...
|
| It's actually insane how sparingly this is discussed when
| talking about advancements in AI.
| kiproping wrote:
| There's Merlin and then there's Birdnet too
| https://birdnet.cornell.edu/. Both by Cornell.
| dunham wrote:
| I've been using birdnet, but it seems to want an internet
| connection to do the identification and sometimes that is
| dicey when there is a bird that I want to identify. (Also
| birds seem to shut up around the time you get the app open.)
|
| I'm going to give Merlin a try - the app has UI to download
| the network for offline use.
| rurp wrote:
| Requiring an internet connection for a nature app is
| absurd. As annoying as it is I get why a big tech company
| like Google fails at this sort of thing, many of their
| employees probably never leave a city and so the products
| always work well for them. But a nature app has no excuse,
| normal usage will get blocked by that all the time.
| meta-meta wrote:
| That's what Merlin is for but it's a ~450mb install.
| BirdNet is only a ~30MB install and birds are everywhere,
| so what's wrong with having an online option for most
| people who spend most of their time within range of a cel
| tower?
| tejtm wrote:
| birdnet pi or go run the model locally with an option to
| push observations back to Cornell
|
| https://www.birdweather.com/birdnetpi
|
| https://github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Tphakala recently also published a cli tool to process
| recordings, it can also use other models such as Google
| perch.
|
| https://github.com/tphakala/birda
| upcoming-sesame wrote:
| Merlin is great for identifying birds, but I could never
| understand how to just post the information to the community
| for them to verify the observation. Compared to Seek /
| iNaturalist I find the uploading process complicated and I
| still have no idea how to do it.
| nunez wrote:
| Indispensable app. Works extremely well.
| skyberrys wrote:
| I send things too iNaturalist all the time, it's great, it really
| helped me learn about my local fauna. I want to do a project with
| their API to identify a couple hundred wildflower photos I've
| been hoarding. Would that work? ( Idea is my wildflower app could
| send to their models to confirm my original identification)
| jw_cook wrote:
| I've wanted to do something similar, but unfortunately their CV
| model isn't public and can't be used through their API.
| contingencies wrote:
| Yet they shelter under a 'Science' tax-break. It's
| duplicitous. They should publish their models and build
| process. If it's not available for replication, it's not
| science.
| Taipan_Enigma wrote:
| Are their models considered to be the best or is there some
| competition? For plant identification, they blow every other
| free app I have tried out of the water. It also seems to
| return the genus of a plant rather than misidentify the
| species which I find impressive.
| jw_cook wrote:
| IMO it's best-in-class. The next best thing might be
| google's speciesnet: https://github.com/google/cameratrapai
| rafram wrote:
| Any idea how SpeciesNet and iNat's model compare to
| BioCLIP 2?
|
| https://huggingface.co/imageomics/bioclip-2
| skyberrys wrote:
| That's too bad, maybe I can upload it to iNaturalist then
| reference the entry there. I don't mind if it's duplicated, I
| just want to be able to improve the location data without
| sharing the improved location data so publicly.
| Matumio wrote:
| I don't know if it will work, but Pl@ntNet Identify (which I
| use often) seems to have an API:
| https://docs.plantnet.org/en/reference/api-plantnet/
| frontierkodiak wrote:
| Hey, good news! Pollination ecologist + ML guy here; with open
| models coming soon.
|
| You can keep an eye on (gh) polli-labs/linnaeus (a bit stale;
| I'll rebase on my private repo later tonight-). There's some
| cool ideas in here to exploit the structure of taxonomic
| hierarchies to help the model approach recognition how a
| professional taxonomist might.. so working from coarse to fine,
| taxonomy-guided label smoothing (distributing alpha mass by
| taxonomic distance)..and (forthcoming) RL on expert consensus
| to teach abstention (if an expert could only identify a
| specimen to genus for some set of inputs; then our model should
| abstain from a species classification for the same inputs).
| Unfortunately I am very, very compute-constrained- but shooting
| for late April/first week of May for insect + flowering plant
| models. (Other taxa will come later; probably as unified
| model). I'm working on camera-based (automated) ecological
| monitoring systems for ~6yrs at this point; it's a really fun
| problem space! dropped out of grad school to go all-in on
| automating my favorite job I ever had (pollination ecology
| field research..watching flowers for visitations!); since I
| knew I'd always be a mediocre ecologist- but an engineer that
| happens to care about ecology could be very very valuable to my
| field.
|
| a taxa recognition model turns out to be only a small piece of
| the system you need to extract structured observational data
| from cameras in the field :-) Working with one of my partners
| right now to launch a really cool demo of what's possible these
| days- Texas folks especially; keep an eye out on wildflower.org
| around May 1!
|
| I'll spill more ink soon but (anyone) please get in touch if
| you find these things interesting. Or if you'd like to help me
| out with compute/expenses!
| skyberrys wrote:
| This project looks awesome pollination ecologist + ML guy! I
| starred it and will definitely be exploring using this. I'm
| actually pretty simple with my needs because I'm after only a
| few specific wildflowers not the whole ecosystem. But of
| course it's impressive how comprehensive your project is
| looking.
| Beestie wrote:
| This site was helpful in documenting the spread of lantern flies
| (invasive critters that damage trees on the U.S. East Coast) -
| the more folks that report sightings (of anything not just
| problem critters) the better for all concerned.
|
| Conversely, its also beneficial to report sightings of helpful
| bugs/birds/bats/etc. so can get an early warning when a
| population starts to thin out.
| ray__ wrote:
| I love this app, but it's also a significant doxxing risk
| especially for the large number of non-technical users that it
| has. A quick look at the map reveals the home addresses and names
| of many iNaturalist users in my neighborhood, lots of them older
| folks that probably don't realize that adding all of the neat
| wildlife that they see in their backyard (or uploading things
| they see on remote hikes without any 3G coverage once their phone
| connects to their home wifi network) is also putting their home
| address on display by adding a cluster of photos right next to
| their house that are all attached to their account.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Yeah.. there should be a prompt that gauges how savvy the user
| is, and if the user doesn't understand the implications of
| this, the default should be low precision location data with a
| random offset per item + random offset per user.
| jayknight wrote:
| It has options to hide or obscure the location, which I use
| whenever I'm anywhere near my house, but it should be a
| little better about prompting users to use that.
| rwoll wrote:
| Strava (a running tracking app) provides two helpful
| controls you can set as your default:
|
| 1. "Hide the start and end points of activities that start
| at SPECIFIC addresses." 2. "Hide start and end no matter
| where they happen."
|
| Then it can be useful to add your home/work/routine
| locations.
|
| If iNaturalist doesn't have a setting like that, it's a
| nice approach -- especially if it's included as part of
| initial onboarding flow -- so it helps people without
| needing to remember to make visibility choices each time.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Does this matter if my account is some random username about
| birds?
|
| Like all people learn is "someone does in fact live at that
| address and they use this app"
| ray__ wrote:
| Maybe not, but I'd want to know beforehand either way. And
| looking through accounts near me suggests that a fair number
| of users add enough detail to make me think that they don't
| realize that their info is so public (selfies/profile
| pictures being the most problematic example imo).
| jszymborski wrote:
| Yah, this is what I do, however I think this is what GP is
| talking about when they say savvy (or maybe I'm flattering
| myself). Plenty of folks with their full details on their
| profile.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Home ownership is in the public record tho, right?
| jszymborski wrote:
| Right, this is true, so it is possible to associate a
| person to their photos.
|
| My main concern was revealing my home address, however,
| and I don't believe my actions on iNaturalist allow folks
| to go from my name to my address.
| ehnto wrote:
| Depends on what linking credentials you may have registered
| with. If they have a data leak, those details will be linked
| to your address in that way.
|
| Seems pretty unlikely even with a data leak, that someone
| would go through the effort, but it's worth acknowledging as
| a vector.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| There's an option to obscure the exact location of plants, but
| it's not obvious.
| getpost wrote:
| I can hide my home-based observation locations, but others
| usually do not. People who post observations in my front yard
| cause other iNat users to visit. This hasn't been a problem in
| that there have been only a few additional visitors, and they
| are friendly. Still, I don't like my yard being publicized.
|
| People who walk by the yard might tell their friends, but
| ordinary word-of-mouth can't be queried online. Not yet.
|
| EDIT: We did have what turned out to be a significant invasive
| species observation. It was published in my SO's account with
| the location obscured. I looked up the species online and
| realized it might be a concern, so I killed it and put it in
| the freezer. In the meantime, the California Agricultural
| Inspectors got wind of it and contacted iNat to obtain the
| email address associated with the account. After making
| contact, they sent someone to pick up my specimen, and the
| later, 4 inspectors (yes, really, 3 inspectors and a
| supervisor) were sent to look for additional specimens. None
| were found.
|
| Unrelated to this incident, I posted endangered species (not on
| our property) in my account, and iNat automatically obscures
| the location. Later on, I got an ~~email~~ message via iNat
| from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife asking for
| access to the precise locations, which I gladly provided.
| ray__ wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know that iNaturalist was so proactive about
| that sort of thing. It also sounds like you have a really
| cool yard! :)
| getpost wrote:
| I didn't mean to suggest that iNat is proactive, they may
| well be.
|
| IIRC, the exact chain of events was: Invasive Species
| Observation posted -> a curator at the LA Natural History
| saw the post and notified the CDFA (Agriculture Inspectors)
| -> CDFA contacts iNat to get email address -> CDFA contacts
| my SO. I don't recall whether iNat had a built-in messaging
| service at the time (they do now).
|
| Regarding endangered species, the California Department of
| Fish and Wildlife evidently joined iNaturalist, in part to
| enhance their data collection. They seem to be monitoring
| iNaturalist and contacting users who have relevant
| observations. They seem very sensitive to privacy concerns,
| and cooperation is voluntary. I'm thrilled a state agency
| is engaging the public in protecting our natural resources.
|
| These state employees have indeed been proactive.
| jakeydus wrote:
| What was the invasive species??
| getpost wrote:
| That would be doxxing, not that it matters here.
| jakeydus wrote:
| I mean, I can see where you're coming from but I think
| it's a stretch.
| kiddico wrote:
| I have my house covered in observations and it would not take a
| rocket scientist to figure out where I live. I'm also a big
| believer in accurately tagging observations with locations of
| things in case someone else wants to try to find it. If someone
| wants to come to my house and take pictures of spring tails
| they're welcome to lol
| whyenot wrote:
| I feel like this ship has already sailed. The home addresses of
| most people, especially if they have lived in the same place
| for awhile, is already online. In my case, even my salary info
| is online because I am a public employee.
| nunez wrote:
| 100%; absolutely. Search your name and an old (or current)
| email address on any search engine. Prepare to be horrified
| when you see address, DOB, social media presence, etc. for
| you AND YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY neatly linked together.
|
| One people search engine had ALL of my emails and screen-
| names, even the ones I created with my first Internet account
| as a kid in 1996. Wild stuff.
| deckar01 wrote:
| Wait until you see what happens when you type your address into
| google earth.
|
| https://youtu.be/xicsyakpIL4
| wglass wrote:
| Hah. I grew up when everyone had their names in the phone book
| with phone number and home address. It matters more to some
| people than others.
| jpmattia wrote:
| In fact, you had to pay extra to have your number/address
| omitted from the phone book.
| nkrisc wrote:
| In many places home purchases are also public records and
| sometimes even published in local newspapers (online these
| days).
| FLGMwt wrote:
| iNat eng here, non-authoritative rep
|
| handling this concern is on our radar but I can't speak to
| delivery timeline. It my involve timed "obscured" windows
| (obscure things for this hiking weekend) and/or user-
| configurable geofences (obscure observations around my home but
| not anywhere else).
|
| we _also_ want to respect the geoprivacy of wildlife: sometimes
| observations generate _problematic_ attention. For sensitive
| species, we want people to report them, but we don't want to be
| complicit in or responsible for interested people flocking to
| the observation and potentially spooking the observed species.
| FLGMwt wrote:
| oops, sorry, I double posted this from an edited draft,
| please see my other comment for more helpful links to actual
| iNat behavior on this.
| FLGMwt wrote:
| hey, iNat eng here, just want to chime in that this is all
| great feedback!
|
| here's [1] some extra info on iNat's current geoprivacy
| treatment and [2] guidance on how to configure this for our
| different platforms for individual `Observations` (our core
| domain entity to which geo is attached).
|
| I'll at least share that this is on our radar to look at, but I
| wouldn't expect changes in the next few months. For now, we
| still want your observations, but if this is a concern you
| have, please take a look at the geoprivacy settings!
|
| [1]: iNat's geoprivacy explainer
| https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/1...
| [2]: platform-specific guidance on configuring geoprivacy for
| an Observation
| https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/1...
| AStrangeMorrow wrote:
| I mean I do agree, and on iNat I can clearly see my house and
| the house of a few other people in the neighborhood. However
| you can easily find the current owner information for a given
| house in the state I live in, and since we bought the house,
| our name.
|
| I guess it is different once you look at people renting, and
| also you could track a specific person posts to see when they
| are posting away from home for example. But as far as revealing
| your home address, sadly there are many other ways in a lot of
| cases
| the_real_cher wrote:
| This is like pro spider league.
| preuceian wrote:
| I've been using Observation.org (or rather its localized version
| Waarneming.nl) to record my hedgehog sightings. Should I use both
| platforms, or do these data points end up aggregated downstream
| anyway?
| jw_cook wrote:
| Both iNaturalist and Observation.org publish observation data
| to GBIF:
|
| https://www.gbif.org/dataset/50c9509d-22c7-4a22-a47d-8c48425...
|
| https://www.gbif.org/dataset/8a863029-f435-446a-821e-275f4f6...
| coalteddy wrote:
| Does anyone know how they make their map so performant? Showing
| all those pins is mind blowing to me coming from leaflet maps.
| Marinetraffic is also a map that blows me away every time i see
| all the icons and how smooth and fast the loading is when zooming
| in. Would love to make a similar map at some point for my hobby
| but leaflet just does not cut it when you want to render
| 10million plus pins on a global map.
|
| Tech blogs or pointers would be great
| noahgolmant wrote:
| You may want to look into the PMTiles format and tippecanoe. It
| efficiently produces pyramidal XYZ tile overviews of vector
| data. Sometimes this is also done server side via the PostGIS
| asMVT ffunction, or Martin.
|
| For client side rendering, deck.gl is quite good, also a newer
| library called lonboard from DevelopmentSeed.
| coalteddy wrote:
| Thanks for those pointers! Very helpful.
| jw_cook wrote:
| Points are rendered server-side, backed by Elasticsearch, and
| served as PNG tiles for each zoom level. Individual markers are
| only rendered for small sets. Some of the relevant source code:
|
| https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/blob/main/app/ass...
|
| https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/blob/main/app/ass...
|
| https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/blob/main/app/ass...
| coalteddy wrote:
| Did not realize that they publish their code. Very cool.
| Thanks!
| functional_dev wrote:
| Looked at their source code out of curiosity. They use
| Elasticsearch as a geo backend, tile server that renders
| PNG images server side for each map tile request.
|
| - low zoom -> server aggregated grid
|
| - high zoom -> switcher to point tiles
|
| browser just displays images, there is no work to do on
| client side..
|
| I generated a visual schematic how these kind of systems
| work: https://vectree.io/c/server-side-geo-tile-rendering-
| elastics...
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Also: WhoBird. A decent bird ID app that has the merit of being
| FOSS and available on F-Droid.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| is there any FOSS app for plants?
| lucb1e wrote:
| This is the only app of this kind that is simple enough for my
| grandma to use it and that works offline.
|
| Birdnet iirc has separate recording, selecting, uploading, and
| results steps, which I tried to teach but it's too much.
| iNaturalist confuses even me about what buttons I'm supposed to
| be pressing if I just want to know what plant I'm looking at
| and not upload whatever (meta)data about me and my device to
| whatever (public?) database. Definitely recommend anyone to
| check out Whobird if you just want a simple, offline solution
| for bird sounds!
| butlike wrote:
| Ok the little infographic that shows "how it works" looks like
| the cloudflare warning when cloudflare can't connect to the host.
| FLGMwt wrote:
| that's funny because we _just_ introduced cloudflare.
|
| it's not my wheelhouse, but it would be comedic so let me know
| if you get the legit cloudflare host connection warning _and
| then_ land on the how it works that you mentioned looks like
| cloudflare.
| gardnr wrote:
| A genuinely good-for-the-world project. The data is really useful
| for science and for machine learning. You can export all the
| research-grade identifications of fungi to train a classifier; if
| that's what you're into.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I wish there was some kind of desktop application that I could
| sit down and locally organize my data into, allowing me to keep a
| full quality source while syncing a copy to naturalist for others
| to benefit from.
|
| As it stands, I don't really have a system in place, and I don't
| want to put a lot of effort into a lossy (assets get compressed
| and stripped of metadata) online project.
| jw_cook wrote:
| iNaturalist would agree with you; they explicitly say[1] it's
| not meant to be the primary source for your photos. Users
| generally fall into a couple broad camps:
|
| 1. Mostly use the mobile app, and take photos and upload
| observations directly from there. Local photo collection either
| isn't a priority or is backed up by their phone's cloud sync.
|
| 2. Mostly use inaturalist.org via a desktop browser, with
| either a standalone digital camera or mobile photos synced to
| desktop. Local filesystem (hopefully plus backups) is the
| source of truth.
|
| I have been working on a desktop application[2] with a long-
| term goal of full bidirectional sync, and a secondary goal of
| offline usage. The current feature set is fairly modest and
| read-only, though, focusing on organizing local photos using
| data from iNat.
|
| [1] https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/about
|
| [2] https://github.com/pyinat/naturtag
| djeastm wrote:
| Not to be confused with iNaturist...
| bsimpson wrote:
| I expected fewer butterflies and more asses.
| FLGMwt wrote:
| we can all dream
| l1ng0 wrote:
| honestly I can never remember which of these words means
| which
| jmusall wrote:
| Haven't tried iNaturalist yet, but I love Merlin Bird ID [1] and
| Flora Incognita [2]. The latter seems to be exceptionally
| accurate (over 80% up to 98% depending on the dataset) [3]. They
| also expose an API for "registered external clients" [4], but so
| far I sadly wasn't able to find any further documentation on it.
|
| A problem I often have with Merlin is that the birds seem to know
| when I record them, and promptly stop singing...
|
| [1] https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
|
| [2] https://floraincongita.com/
|
| [3] https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10676
|
| [4] https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13611
| tamimio wrote:
| Merlin, ebird, rock identifier, and inaturalist are some of the
| great apps to use while out in nature.
| tagami wrote:
| I have a friend that works there. They recently posted a few open
| positions:
|
| User Insights and Analytics Manager
| https://app.beapplied.com/apply/kwwnthztts
|
| Technical Delivery Manager
| https://app.beapplied.com/apply/ppeyvinuw4
| anotheryou wrote:
| how does it compare to obsidentify? (same doxxing problem there)
|
| does it allow to save observations without publishing? want a
| pokedeck
| Evidlo wrote:
| > it has open CORS headers which means it's amazing for demos and
| tutorials.
|
| The fact that this even exists is so sad. CORS is such an ill-
| conceived idea
| pvillano wrote:
| https://www.instagram.com/inaturalistshitpost/
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| is there a way to migrate findings from Seek to iNaturalist? I do
| not want to start from scratch.
|
| Also I am unclear as far as the app. Is it F/LOSS? If so, why is
| it not on other repos like F-Droid?
| ivanstepanovftw wrote:
| iNaturalist - dataset collection project
| NkWsy wrote:
| The Inat API is so great. We use it on our chicago river
| cameratrap ID site to get species info and eventually upload
| results to it. Once we filter out the millions of Chicago Geese.
| https://rangers.urbanrivers.org/cameratrap.
|
| Plus having a project is cool to see other observations in a
| given ecological area https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wild-
| mile-chicago
| samwesl wrote:
| i know this guy and the app is great, feels like pokemon for
| animals in chicago
| rglover wrote:
| This is a great app. Helped me ID some ink caps growing on a bale
| of hay in my backyard recently.
| wdutch wrote:
| I love iNaturalist! It's the closest thing to real-life Pokemon I
| know of. A friend of mine has uploaded several observations that
| turned out to be new to science.
| theden wrote:
| For those that don't know, Erin Patterson (the mushroom murderer
| in Australia) allegedly used iNaturalist to find the poisonous
| mushrooms
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-07-10/inaturalist-d...
|
| https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2025/05/09/the-c...
| halapro wrote:
| I must say, the homepage simple style is extremely pleasing. I
| was always a fan of Metro UI and this perfectly matches it.
| wanderr wrote:
| I am a huge fan of iNaturalist and the concept of citizen
| science. I am into herping, birding and scuba diving and I post
| pretty much all of my photos there. I have about 5000
| observations and am approaching 2000 species. I have a private
| "project" with some good friends. Some of my observations are
| incredibly rare and one of them was even featured on their social
| media.
|
| While I started using iNaturalist initially to satisfy my own
| curiosity about the animals and fungi I was seeing, and then
| expanded my usage to contribute to science in some small way, a
| huge unexpected benefit has been having my photos catalogued and
| findable by species, family, date or location. If I want to show
| a friend the monitor lizards I saw fighting over a huge fish in
| Thailand, I can find it no problem even if I don't remember
| exactly when that was. If I want to show someone all the cool
| frogs I saw in Indonesia, easy. If I can't remember where it was
| that I encountered a gray fox casually strolling down the trail,
| I can find it. Google photos and other AI tagging solutions are
| never going to be accurate and detailed enough to be useful in
| this way.
|
| It is really an amazing tool with a shockingly friendly,
| welcoming and helpful community, in stark contrast with the eBird
| community which I find is quite unwelcoming to beginners. For
| example, if you make a questionable ID on iNaturalist, folks from
| the community will suggest what they think it might be. If you
| claim a rare bird on eBird you can expect a gruff email demanding
| evidence, or you may have it removed from your list pre-
| emptively. That experience may not be universal, but I have seen
| it multiple times. Telling people on the internet they are wrong
| is a favorite activity of many so I really think it's commendable
| the culture that iNaturalist has been able to foster.
|
| For those who don't know, iNaturalist was created by and remained
| a part of the California Academy of Science until relatively
| recently when they were spun off into their own nonprofit entity.
|
| For a while now the long term vision, product and engineering
| decisions they are making have been a bit questionable to me. The
| web version feels like abandonware and has some very clunky
| experiences. The iOS and Android apps function differently and
| have separate longstanding bugs, don't support all the
| functionality of the web version, and are also mostly abandonware
| while the eng team focuses on a new app that is a rewrite. Seek
| feels like it's trying to be Pokemon. iNat next, the new version
| of the iNaturalist app, has a nicer look and feel but seems like
| it will be released missing functionality both from the old apps
| and from the website.
|
| I am not sure how important my own gripes are as a power user,
| perhaps in the end it will be better for new users, but it sort
| of feels like iNaturalists goals as an organization may not be as
| aligned with the original charter as they once were. For the
| purposes of financial stability it is probably most important to
| grow the user base. For the purposes of supporting citizen
| science initiatives it's probably more important to grow
| geographic distribution and the number and diversity of
| observations submitted, so a more balanced approach to growing
| the user base and supporting power users (and converting new
| users into power users) would probably be the approach more
| aligned with their original goals.
| contingencies wrote:
| _iNaturalist was created by and remained a part of the
| California Academy of Science_
|
| I'm not sure that's the case, my impression was they simply
| took funding from and sheltered under the CAS until they split
| off to their own organization.
|
| In their new independent structure they're claiming to be a
| public interest science non-profit, but as they don't publish
| their models or model-building-process, it's non-replicable, so
| in my view it's not Science, and the public never gets their
| hands on the product.
|
| _it sort of feels like iNaturalists goals as an organization
| may not be as aligned with the original charter as they once
| were_
|
| As another user who has contributed five digits of observations
| (over double yours), I couldn't agree more.
| malomalsky wrote:
| I built trmnl plugin over this api!
| https://github.com/Malomalsky/trmnl-inat-nearby-live-intl It
| shows new creatures around you
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I didn't know they had a map feature. I zoomed in on my
| neighborhood and... all the pins are mine :-P
| jimjeffers wrote:
| We use iNaturalist to curate eDNA observed results on
| https://ednaexplorer.org
| abetusk wrote:
| "Unless you specify otherwise when you post Content, you agree to
| license Content you contribute to the Platform under the Creative
| Commons Attribution Noncommercial license (CC BY-NC)." [0]
|
| [0] https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/terms
| nosrepa wrote:
| I regularly use their seek app to identify plants and insects.
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