iNaturalist Overview
What is iNaturalist? iNaturalist is a social network that connects people to nature and generates scientifically valuable biodiversity data. It helps users identify plants and animals with visually similar suggestions and verification by dedicated contributors. The app allows users to keep a record of all living things, and every identification is connected to the tree of life. The app is grounded in science and advancing science and conservation. It is a not-for-profit initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. The app is free to use and available in 35+ languages.
Features
- Identification suggestions: Take or import a photo and view the top 10 most visually similar species matches and tap through to get more information.
- Feedback from the community: Create an account to share your observations and start a conversation about what you saw.
- Keep a record of all living things: Build your life list by posting to iNaturalist.
- Grounded in science: Every identification is connected to the tree of life, which means you can search for broad classifications like “Ferns” or “Fungi” as well as species-level identifications like “Humpback Whale”.
- Advancing science & conservation: Millions of observations created and identified by the iNaturalist community are shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
- Enabling citizen science and community science: Join any of the tens of thousands of projects around the world on iNaturalist to draw attention to and collect data about particular species or places.
- No hidden charges: The app is truly free because nature is for everyone.
- Best for wild plants and animals: The iNaturalist community is better at identifying wild plants and animals than those in gardens or horticulture.
- Control how your location is shared: Set the privacy to obscured or private.
- More than a mobile app: iNaturalist has even more extensive features and tools for learning and exploration.
- 35+ languages: iNaturalist has been translated into dozens of languages.
- A global network: iNaturalist is used in every country on earth!
Official Screenshots
Product Details and Description of
this app is a social network for sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. The primary goal is to connect people to nature, and the secondary goal is to generate scientifically valuable biodiversity data from these personal encounters. this app helps you identify plants and animals with visually similar suggestions and verification by dedicated contributors. Get connected with a community of over a million scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature! By recording and sharing your observations, you'll create research-quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. KEY FEATURES • Identification suggestions: Take or import a photo and view the top 10 most visually similar species matches and tap through to get more information. You can view these suggestions even before creating an account. • Feedback from our community: Create an account to share your observations and start a conversation about what you saw. Can’t identify the organism? Start with a broad identification like “plants” or “fungi” so others with more expertise can find it and refine the identification. • Keep a record of all living things: Build your life list by posting to this app. Where, when, and what you saw is the basis of each observation you create. • Grounded in science: Every identification is connected to the tree of life, which means you can search for broad classifications like “Ferns” or “Fungi” as well as species-level identifications like “Humpback Whale” (and everything in between). • Advancing science & conservation: Millions of observations created and identified by the this app community are shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility where they are used to advance scientific understanding of biodiversity through open data and open science. • Enabling citizen science and community science: Join any of the tens of thousands of projects around the world on this app to draw attention to and collect data about particular species or places. • Not-for-profit: this app is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, both 501(c)3 nonprofits in the United States. this app is free for anyone to use thanks to the generous support of many organizations and individuals. Thank you! • No hidden charges: This app is truly free because we believe nature is for everyone. • Best for wild plants and animals: The this app community is better at identifying wild plants and animals than those in gardens or horticulture. Get outside and find what’s wild! • Control how your location is shared: Set the privacy to obscured (only general location is shared) or private (no location is shared at all, but much harder for others to help identify). The locations of species at risk from disturbance are automatically obscured. • More than a mobile app: this app has even more extensive features and tools for learning and exploration. Get the full experience at this app.org! • 35+ languages: this app has been translated into dozens of languages thanks to multilingual enthusiasts who want to see the community grow. • A global network: this app is used in every country on earth! In many countries, we have formal agreements with local organizations to promote this app. Use this app for contributing to all this app Network sites, including Naturalista (Mexico and Colombia), this app.NZ (New Zealand), this app.ca (Canada), Biodiversity4All (Portugal), iNaturalistAU (Australia), iNaturalistPa (Panama), iNaturalistEc (Ecuador), ArgentiNat (Argentina), iNaturalistil (Israel), and iNaturalistFi (Suomi/Finland).
Top Reviews
By Luke van der Colff
An amazing app all around for identifying species.
I’m just a 20 year old that wants to know what every creatures purpose is around me and this has been the most fun way to do it. There are no ads, you upload a picture of the animal of reasonable quality, it helps if there’s multiple pictures and you describe what you saw in the description area. You put your location, which can be moved around so that your location isn’t known. It’s important to note that the location is key in determining a species sometimes so be decently accurate on the location. Once you’ve done that, AI, that’s right, artificial intelligence studies the pictures and compares them to other picture alike and species in the area to often give you a suggestion that’s correct or another 10 suggestions below of which I usually find the species I’m looking for if it’s not too obscure. I’ve also contributed to the knowledge of where some species are which feels great. My only complaint is there’s no place to provide feedback but here and the upload speed is reasonably slow. But this is a wonderful app that I recommend for any biologist. Yes, you can submit species under the microscope, too!!!! Thank you California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society for helping create this app!!!
By Adam Nicke
Love the app maybe make it more like a social network of naturalists?
I really love this app and use it pretty much daily since I’ve downloaded it. It’s great to have with you to quickly identify a species using the picture instead of having to go and google the characteristics of what you saw and hope it knows what you mean. I would like to see them update it with a section where you can go to a person’s profile and see all of their observations in one place like the way you view a project and all of its observations. Perhaps even add an option to follow a particular person and then see all the observations of people you follow in a feed. You can do kinda already do this but you have to search for the person and then be confined to whatever given map area you have on your screen. I think it would be better to have all of them on one page because sometimes I come across an observer whose observations I like (camera quality, focus on a specific species, or just like their observations) and I want to see all of them. Also, they should add a place where you can view all of the observations you’ve added to your favorites.
By D584fjf689
This app is my life
If I could, I would marry this app. iNat is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have learned so much and have met so many amazing people through this app. Before iNat, I was the weird person who liked bugs. With iNat, I have slowly blossomed into an amateur subject matter expert documenting previously unknown behaviors/species relationships/coloration variations and submitting specimens to university entomological collections. I went from not being able to tell the difference between rice stink bugs and brown stink bugs one year ago to knowing hemipteran scientific names better than the common ones. Sure, iNat didn't do that in and of itself, but it facilitated my self-education and gave me the means to organize my data/photographs, and my competitive nature motivates me to go out and DOCUMENT ALL THE THINGS! The iNat people are continually improving their platform, and this mobile version is the best yet. The photo suggestion tool is amazing and sorely needed. Not perfect, but it's THE BEST version of photo ID out there and I'm frankly amazed by how good it is.
