Snapshot Serengeti Talk

  • ABG1416 by ABG1416

    There appears there might be a line of animals in the distance just below the horizon, but I couldn't even gues what they are, I only counted the wildebeest on the edge of the picture in the foreground. Was the right?

    Posted

  • sisige by sisige

    Definitely a tough one! Personally, on this picture, I'd estimate maybe 6 more wildebeest, or so, based on movement or large shapes.

    If there is an easy-to-ID animal in the foreground and lots more with similar coloring far in the background, you can usually assume they are more of the same. Count whatever you feel comfortable calling an animal, e.g. moving lumps are more likely to be animals than stationary ones, or sometimes you can see the typical grazing wildebeest profile shape (with the peak at the shoulder and slope down the neck) on an animal, so I'd be more likely to count that. I tend to ignore dark, stationary, nondescript lumps in the distance, as they could just as easily be bushes.

    Ultimately it's all a judgement call. Make your best guess based on what you can see. 😃

    Posted

  • aliburchard by aliburchard scientist, translator

    @sisige is exactly right. That's the kind of picture that you could go either way on -- and we tend to see that in the answers. In the end, we (the science team) are able to make a final decision on what we think is in the photo based largely on how much variance we see in the answers. For example, I'd guess that maybe half to 3/4 of folks would call this 1 wildebeest, and the rest would identify it as a group of 11-50 wildebeest (counting those blobs in the background). And we'd go with the majority vote.

    Posted