Snapshot Serengeti Talk

I have an animal that is mostly off the edge of the image. I can’t identify it. What do I do?

  • kosmala by kosmala scientist

    We would like you to try your best to identify the animal. While we realize that it won’t be possible in every case to make a 100% confident determination, you can usually narrow down difficult images to some reasonable options. For example, if you can only see a leg of the animal, you might be able to tell that it’s a gazelle of some sort. In this case, just pick one of the gazelles.

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  • kosmala by kosmala scientist

    Make your best guess. Your answer will be combined with answers of other volunteers, so don’t worry about getting it wrong.

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  • katherineslive.co.uk by katherineslive.co.uk

    lol - easier said than done. Many shots feature half a tail or half an ear. End up with "Hm, that tail could be a baboon, or one of the deer type lying down, or …"

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  • tirralirra by tirralirra

    At different levels, the data can show -

    animal/no animal
    number of animals
    type of animal
    behavior of animal

    So, it seems to me that when details of behaviour, type and number are not evident, we should at least record that there is an animal there, rather than record wrongly that nothing is there. It would be good if there was the capacity to record 'animal - don't know what kind'.

    When I see something I can't recognise, I just guess anything, so I don't have to misrepresent and say there is nothing there. I figure that these images are likely to be the ones with the most diverse responses and likely to be flagged for the researchers eyeball themselves.

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  • aliburchard by aliburchard scientist, translator

    You're exactly right!

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  • stevage by stevage

    It'd be nice to have an "unidentifiable" though. I had one that looked vaguely like the camera had been knocked over and there was an animal standing over it. Maybe. The animal was probably hairy. Although they might have been feathers. There was nothing to compare against for scale. It could have been a bird, a jackal, a buffalo...

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  • senfjobl by senfjobl

    Yes, I wish to have an "unidentifiable"-button, too. I had a night-capture with luminising eyes, probably a moving predator. But I haven't a clue which one it could be. It would be also good for "counting" the animals far away.

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  • jonh by jonh

    Ill add my voice to having an 'unidentified' button. Surely it would quickly highlight images that need expert evaluation.

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  • janrou by janrou

    @jonh: We're the experts! Your guess combined with 9 other guesses results in a stathistical category. The research team has millions of images. This means that the stathistical uncertainity becomes low.

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  • kosmala by kosmala scientist

    Please also see this for a longer explanation: http://blog.snapshotserengeti.org/2012/12/14/we-need-an-i-dont-know-button/

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  • Sserge22 by Sserge22

    additional categories needed:

    1. something but too far off
    2. only part of an animal visible
    3. eyes visible only

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  • jbedient by jbedient

    Part of being a scientist making educated guesses about what the data is showing us. You can always make an informed guess as to what the animal is. If you can only see part of it, you can tell the color, probably, narrow down the choices that way, eliminate as many as possible, and take your best guess. If all you see is eyes, try to decide if they are high off the ground (impala, zebra, wildebeest) or low (hyena). Look for clues. Don't make yourself crazy though, take a shot and move on. This is the best crowd-source citizen science project ever, BTW.

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  • nwalters33 by nwalters33

    this discussion REALLY helped! thank you!

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  • sirarasi by sirarasi

    We need additional buttons to identify : far off, night vision, part of animal
    Nothing to show does not work all the time! Or provide a button to skip

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