Photo: Maria Shanina / Unsplash

How often do you pass by a couple of flowers or that weirdly fascinating bug but you can't really tell its name or species? Well, if your answer was "yea, a lot of times", then iNaturalist has the solution: the Seek app.

You can't possibly know everything at all. So there's Internet for you. iNaturalist, an online platform for nature lovers - kind of like a mix between Facebook and Wikipedia, bur for fauna and flora - launched this brand new app to help its "scientist-citizens" to identify plants and animals that they cross by. Well, at least 30 thousand species, so far, as this number may grow with the new species identified by users and later registered by iNaturalist.

Its procedure is simple and easy. The app uses image recognition technology to identify the animal or plant you're taking a picture of. It's like Shazam, but instead of identifying song, you're trying to identify life forms.

However, it has to be a focused and close photography, otherwise it's difficult for the app's AI to understand and analyze it, which has been one of the main complaints so far: Seek's in-app camera doesn't have great quality.

Besides that, when the species is identified, the app is able to get you information (from Wikipedia) about it. Also, it works like a game. While capturing some shots of fauna and flora, you can grow your own collection of found species. According to your number of animals and plants identified, you can earn badges.

It doesn't recquire any registration, but it will ask for your location, so the app can find and suggest nearby living beings and help you with your quest with an in-app map.

For now, the app is only available for iOS (Apple Systems). Let's hope you can find even more joy and fun while strolling through the park!

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Author: Pedro Valente Lima