A Nature professional in the Netherlands recommended the app if I wanted to ID something I found in our new nature school square.
She is a walking Nature encyclopedia and I always asked her for identifications. But using iNaturalist instead of asking her makes me remember much more of what I observed, which I find delightful to notice.
I heard about it on a sustainability podcast episode where they were talking to a gastropod expert who briefly mentioned it. I was hooked right away.
Pretty sure originally I discovered it on the App Store after searching for âanimal identifierâ years ago. Rediscovered it for a class project, then promptly forgot about it. Encountered a gray tree frog a year later, and wanting to know more about it, looked up âanimal encyclopediaâ on the App Store, and found it again (for good)!
Iâm a freelance editor, and I was working on a book called The Flora and Fauna of Stanley Park, for a BC publisher on Vancouver Island. The author generally mapped out where various species could be seen in the park, but there were a few entries that lacked locations. I queried him, and while waiting for a response, I did a little surfing on my own and stumbled across the iNaturalist.
My local science museum (NCMNS) did a lot of outreach recommending people to use it as far back as the mid-2010s, so I got on it at their recommendation and was hooked!
I discovered the existence of the iNaturalist application and website after watching a YouTube video posted by a user named Louis_raginwulf.
At the time, I was primarily using the observations.be app to indulge my passion for nature, but I was no longer satisfied with it. So I quickly decided to test iNaturalist to see if it would meet my expectations.
After just a few days of use, I was won over and decided to completely abandon observations.be for iNaturalist.
Today, I am delighted with this change and to have discovered an open, interesting, and above all, supportive community.
We were introduced to each other at a party by mutual friends. Similar interests â bugs, rodents, stuff most people dislike. We dated a few times, then went our separate ways, then met up again years later. Weâve been together ever since. I guess it was fate âŚ.
No, actually a biologist colleague mentioned the website at a meeting as a useful place for logging photo records. That was around 2013. But otherwise the above story is true.
For the slow ⌠walkers.
They put up a special sign for us at Kirstenbosch 
(but intended for speeding mountain bikers)
I wish I could remember but my memory is terrible naturally and from health conditions :( I think it mightâve been a friend? I know I had an account here before I made my eBird account.
It doesnât bother me too much, and at this point honestly Iâm just glad I decided to stay active.
It was their youtube videos that brought me here.
It was a video by AVNJ on youtube. After that I was hooked and uploaded every photo that I had on my laptop.
I had heard about iNat before, but it didnât fully register in my brain until I received a how-to guide from a student looking for contributors to a masterâs thesis involving an iNat project to collect bumble bee data. I have to admit I didnât get involved right away and missed that project, because I was too busy and there seemed to be a learning curve that I didnât quite have time for at the time. Iâm now helping other students with their projects though.
One of my undergrad professors recommended we use it in a class. He also introduced me to light trapping so I have him to thank for two of my main hobbies at this point
I was looking for images of Bombina orientalis to make an album of animals with âshamanâ in their (Korean) common name and came across a few amphibian photos on Google from iNaturalist. I was amazed by the site and immediately became hooked. I registered for an account back in 2015 and have been using iNaturalist ever since!
I believe the first time I heard of it was through a New York Times article in roughly 2016. It took a few more years and changes of circumstance before I started using it regularly in 2019.
Edit: It may have been this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-inaturalist.html
I got interested in the idea of a lifelist. A way to keep track of all the species I have seen fascinated me. I starting using just ebird, and then signed up for iNat a few months later.
What is light trapping? it sounds interesting
so you are dating the biologist colleague? or was the first story a joke? I am so confused X-D
The first story looks like a joke about what would have happened if iNat was a person. I found it quite funny!
It just reminded me of the question: So how did you meet your wife? Sorry, just my weird sense of humor.
