Seek

Paul and I allow our children quite limited screen time, but with one Chromebook, two smartphones, and four Kindles, it feels like we have plenty of screens in our lives. The Chromebook is primarily for Dillon's schoolwork and my writing, the Kindle Fire for graphic novels and drawing videos, the other Kindles for chapter book reading, and our phones for everything else. 

As I have written previously, we quite enjoy using the Merlin Bird ID app to identify and study the birds in our area. In the last six weeks, however, we have taken more regularly to using another awesome nature app called Seek, free for Android and iOS, slightly addictive (go figure, it is an app), and super fun! If you do not already have Seek on your phone, and you enjoy nature --  walking, hiking, camping or otherwise spending time outside-- I highly recommend you download it. It is not just for kids. It is for anyone who is curious.

Seek was created by an organization called iNaturalist, a large online photo database of living organisms, a collaboration between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society (both organizations I can get behind!).  It uses crowd source data and live image recognition technology to identify species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, insects, arachnids, mammals, plants, fungi, mollusks, and fish. And it turns any amble through nature into a spontaneous science lesson for the whole family. 

I have long enjoyed biology and have often wished I was a person who could identify a specific tree, an unusual plant, or a cool spider. But I am not that person. It just does not stick. Even when I am intentional about it -- going home, looking something up, commuting myself to remembering it -- the next time I walk by that same tree, I have long forgotten its name. 

Living in a place as beautiful and bio-diverse as Ecuador provides ample opportunities to explore our natural surroundings. Having curious kids reminds me all the time how little I know about the world we inhabit. 

Enter Seek, the app that allows us all to learn together (and Dillon to commit the scientific and common names immediately to memory while they fly immediately out of my porous brain). Seek is simple. And satisfying.

Imagine our family of five walking down a dirt road in La Josefina. It is a bit muddy. The birds are singing. The cows are munching on the green grass. The banana trees are swaying in the breeze. Suddenly, Jonah exclaims, "Whoa, mom, look at that flower!"

"What flower?" I ask, peering up at the moss covered tree to the left. 

"No, not there," he points down, "THERE, over there!"

"Oooh!!!!" exclaims Dillon excitedly, "Can we Seek it?" as he runs over to swipe my phone from my hand before I have even identified the plant in question. 

And the next thing you know, Dillon is holding the phone over a flashy pink and magenta flower. "Marvel of Peru!" he shouts, excitedly. "It is a Marvel of Peru!" Or, alternatively, he says irritably, as he steadies the phone over the wildflower, "Darn it, I could only get as far as the family, but check out these ants! Let's Seek them. They have spikes on their backs! Look at them!"

This is what is cool about Seek.

When we see something  that we cannot identify, we turn on the phone, open the app, click on the camera, point it at the natural wonder we are observing, and wait. Tapping on the screen adjusts the lighting and helps the camera focus. As the leaf or flower or insect comes into view, the app starts trying to identify the organism based on the location and its vast database.

At the top of the screen, there are seven circles that indicate the taxonomy level: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and name.  The app does its best to get as far down the taxonomy ladder as possible, but occasionally gets stuck on the class ("Dicots" is a place we often find ourselves stuck) or family (e.g. "Ginger family").  The app tries to reach certainty, even prompting you to try different angles or alternative parts of the organism for a better image. Basically, it coaches you.  

Once the app confirms the species, then ensues a frantic rush to click on the photo button before it loses its level of certainty and, thus, its conclusion. If one is of steady hand, one quickly captures the image and saves the data. Once successful, a page pops up that tells you when you observed the organism and its species. If you have internet, you may press the "view species" button and are gifted a brief summary including the scientific name, geographic range, and whether you have recorded this species before. The app then saves the data in a folder called "My Observations", which is accessible later.

Like all good apps, Seek also has specific challenges for the competitive souls among us. Dillon is currently working on a "wildflower challenge", in which the goal is to identify 10 unique flowering plants down to the species. 

There is a more technical parent app called iNaturalist, which is also free but has more features and  more possibilities. iNaturalist does not just give you one answer based on your image; it offers you a list of possible matches and entreats you to identify your organism. It also uses a "citizen-science database" by crowd-sourcing people's responses to the images you upload and asking users "what is this?" 

iNaturalist allows you to share your images and observations with naturalists, discuss findings with other nature nerds, get a possible identification on a community forum (including experts weighing in) and help improve your own identification skills. The iNaturalist community has over one million scientists, from novice to experts. In addition, you can feel good about contributing valuable data and scientific research. 

We are enough novices that we are sticking to the certainty of the Seek app for now, but we just discovered a feature on the app in which we are able to share our Seek data with the iNaturalist community, so we are going to try that out. You should too. We can all be naturalists together!

Can you identify any of these beautiful organisms below?