I’ve seen a few photos of things like ground beef or turkey, cheese, hot dogs, coconut milk, etc. Curious if anyone has a standard comment they use for these, if you address it some way in the DQA, or just ignore the observation? Or are products considered legitimate observations on iNat?
Update: I just realized that the specific photo that prompted me to ask this is actually part of a biology lab project (so there are a lot of similar photos posted by multiple users). Based on the project page, the students were supposed to do DNA sequencing on whatever food product they brought in and then upload the observations to iNat.
It seems like the observers were just following their instructor’s direction on this, so I’m not sure if it being a school project makes any difference.
A theme that I noticed this weekend, from students from multiple schools or colleges, was observations of microorganisms by showing packages of various cultured foods: cheese, yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, etc. Sure, they’re in the captive/cultivated category, but the Frequently Used Responses seem to need a slightly different phrasing for these cases.
If they put a yogurt sample under a microscope to get some image of the individual cells, that would surely “count” (if it wasn’t for the cultivated/captive rule). Theoretically, homemade sourdough cultures under the microscope would count as wild, since the microbes are wild.
If products of the organism do not count as evidence, that does bring up the question of whether observations of tree sap/resin count…and whether scat counts, even if it can be traced to species. Is it a matter of intact cellular contents? If so, how much?
A raw, plucked chicken, such as for roasting whole chicken, isn’t massively different by evidence quality from a equivalently-sized road-killed bird picked over by predators and decayed to the point it’s missing parts, especially if the chicken has the legs and neck on (if that’s the case in some countries). So it’s not as if being dead and missing some parts (e.g., feathers) would itself disqualify it; it’s the fact it’s a chicken and thus captive/cultivated.
So if a hunter killed a wild deer and made ground deer burgers (assuming they’re pure and not mixed with beef to make it tastier), what’s the logic for that not counting? Should there be a “significantly human-tampered evidence” rule? (e.g.: if one finds local shed fish scales in the wild that are clearly from a specific fish species, that could count, but the same fish scales preserved, colored, and arranged into a fish-scale flower would not, even if it’s recognizable on the macro level, unlike ground deer meat).
EDIT: I wrote a lot of this before seeing the original poster’s edit on it being a DNA sequencing project. For observations of hamburgers, coconut milk and such, even if the DNA indisputably indicates the species, it’s not suitable because it’s from captive/cultivated species. It does bring up the question of using DNA sequencing on wild-caught canned sardines or salmon patties, though.
lately there’s been a lot of photos of packaged foods along with a slip of paper with initials on it, or i’ve seen at least two users include their college ID card…
there’s a project collecting these, i’m assuming it’s for a class. some of the observations in the project are legit, outdoor observations of fungi etc., but a lot are ‘here’s a piece of bread with mold and my college ID card’
Yeah, there are a lot of “observations” of people’s dirty rooms, food and household objects being uploaded. They seem to track back to “specific project link removed by moderator”. I find them super annoying, but I have no idea what, if anything, can be done about them?
I’ve just been avoiding identifying stuff, because I feel like I’m inevitably going to snap at a random kid otherwise.
I am just (metaphorically) eating popcorn and watching this thread (not dealing with the IDs), but in the spirit of @DianaStuder, I note that the 3 admins of that project have a combined total of ONE ID for others.
It’s more than one project. This evening I’ve been taking time to add welcome notes to new users and there are many similar cases, all over Florida. It seems their professors all have the same idea to use iNat but I think there needs to be some guidelines. There are a few students who are at least showing the contents of the pot of yogurt, but many are just showing the outside of the product. Some have added notes explaining why they chose to show X food item, which at least makes some sense for their class.
To answer the original question, though, I have been mostly ignoring the food products because I didn’t know what to do, either!
I was looking to see if there are any guidelines for creating a project - because in this instance, I can’t really fault the observer (student) for just following their professor’s instruction.
I agree there should be some guidelines though. The observations for this particular project got to be a lot to work around, so I finally just went through the Identify tab and marked them all as “reviewed” to get them out of my way.
Hmm. I’m glad to say I haven’t run into these issues but if I did . . . . If I were confident that the observation was posted for the microorganisms that make cheese, yogurt, sourdough, or that raise bread, I’d mark the observation “captive/cultivated,” just as I would most observations of cattle, sheep, chickens, etc. Essentially all coconut milk in the U.S. comes from cultivated sources, so I’d mark that cultivated, too. However, I’d also feel free to mark all these things and hot dogs, ground beef, etc., as “Human" because they are human artifacts. As far as iNaturalist goes, these are equivalent actions, putting the observation into Casual. (On the blessed day when iNaturalist separates Captive/Cultivated from Casual, they won’t be equivalent, of course, and but until that distant, possibly infinitely distant, day, it doesn’t matter which they’re labeled.) Sorry to hear some of you are having to deal with this kind of observation.
I think marking this kind of observation Human or Captive/Cultivated is better than just ignoring them or hitting “reviewed” because that labeling gets the observation out of the way of all of us.
I think these would clearly come under the umbrella of ‘cultivated’. You may have deliberately cultured an organism that was wild, but it is now in culture.
I did see the ‘plastic tub of yoghurt’ because they had a joke, or mistaken? location, which came up in my African obs.
wow. That IS a record. 3% RG (link removed by moderator) even worse than the broken CNC projects. And this project started in 2020 - has that solitary ID from an admin. The third admin is inactive, with zero activity ever.
PS if these obs of packaged food were in ‘my’ batch - I would go thru and mark those packages as Human. Mushrooms at supermarket = Not Wild. I did skim thru and I see lots of valid obs in the project too.
How about a headless trout on asphalt road close to a river and a camping place?
Trout?
Human?
Vertebrate (as the originator of placement could well be a fox) ?
Captive (maybe not from river but from supermarket) ?
If somebody wants to stop such weird philosophical excurse, the question should rather be how to disencourage people from absorbing resources like that than to search for “scientific” correctness.
I have flagged one project that seems to have a high proportion of observations that are products with cultivated microorganisms and mentioned the admins to start a conversation about this issue. If there are other specific projects that appear to have issues, they can also be flagged on iNat itself to try to address, but we should avoid the thread becoming a place to call out behavior in specific projects. As such, I’ll edit a couple of posts above to remove titles and links of specific projects on iNat. I think the original question of how to address situations like this in general is very legitimate and productive. Thanks!
It is a compromise between - Mark as Reviewed - solves the problem for me. But. How can I take this obs out of the Needs ID pool for the other active identifiers. Who burn out when they see a row of packaged food.
I dont see such stuff, may because i look at an other region.
I would agree on that. And i think that makes them not better or worse but just cultivated.
I also agree with this. If it is not just packed food, in other words Product-placement”, but also some kind of observation, it may is at least cultivated.
I also would go with that, it can be some how still wild (the observation could still be mold or bacteria) but it can be or get cultivated too.
At least wild traces are very OK to me.
This is also very understandable and consequent to me.
I see it the same way, bones from a chicken are still bones from a chicken, but if they are turned into some art then they are art, human, and not evidence to an observation.
In that case i would ignore the ID card, while i tend to see the mold as a wild species that can be interesting.
Its clear and simple, human trace, cultivated, no evidence of an observed life-form.
I think too, press what fits, Homo Sapiens, cultivated, no evidence, may the date and location is correct.
They need an iNat-Ambassador-Programm!
This would count as product-placement, if there is only one such picture and nothing of value (microscope, mold, at least some explaining notes which could be subjective of interest) added to it, and even worse if it repeats often, i would see a clear flag on that.
This is reasonable, pragmatic and totally OK.
Any way i dont think that IDer must ID every single observation, if IDer want to it is OK, if they can it is OK, but if they dont want or cant or just to some degree it is also totally OK.
This is also true, i even think it can be different from case to case on a individual basis, depending on what the observation is focusing to.
Mostly simple yes, captive cultivated human and out of the way.
I feel similar or the same.
Its not a wild philosophy,. Just as close you can, it is may not bad intent by the observer. May from theyr neighbour while they them self think it is from a rare wild or endangered animal. Nothing wrong with that.
But while yoghurt may can be wild or mostly is cultivated, there are also professionals which observe a whole botanic garden, which by that is cultivated, they even take pictures from the plants and the labels (some times not even correct) and while they even seem to gen-code the plants they may not even take theyr time to ID theyr observations them self, what renders them to no value even if it may is a rare and still cultivated species.
There are also some microscopic pictures, without labels, may there is no way to ID them at all, but still it can be a wild species also if one could argue that it is captured.
Also i do not think that the captured flag equals to no value. In my region we have some neophytes which were once cultivated and now its a wild pest. So data about captured species can also be of interest in a future where they go wild.
I think the best that IDers can do is, to ID what they can and want. And let the pressure of IDing every thing fall and forget about the idea that every thing even can get IDed.
There are people who upload landscape pictures from nature, lately i saw the top of a mountain, very nice, but it is no eveidence to a specific species as there was only snow and not even a bird in the air, so it is also Homo Sapiens as some Homo Sapiens was there, what may is rare but evidently. It shows in that case that an not wild but cultivated human was there.
An other thing is when they picture an landscape with some parts gras or mixed plants and may also a forest and a lake, then it is also human and by that also cultivated, but may it is also not possible to ID it that precisely, so it can also be just life and marked as reviewed.
I also think that a birder may has no interest in molds, but may other shroomers can have a different perspective on that.
As long as it is not clearly just a joke or bad intent an observation may can have value to some while it has none to others.
I think this have to be taken into account.