iNatting the Rainforest Café

Rainforest Café is a chain of nature-themed restaurants. It started in the US in 1994, but it now has locations in Paris, Malta, Abu Dhabi, and other places:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest_Cafe#International_locations

The author decided to test iNat’s CV (and, I guess, the restaurant’s biology consultants and animatronics teams) by iNatting the displays:
https://defector.com/who-lives-at-the-rainforest-cafe

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That was a fun read, lol. My guess with the spider is that it has learned from people ID’ing “Human” on pieces of trash, toys, etc., that a cartoon creature is probably going to be ID’d as “Human”.

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Well, that was a fun read. Thank you for sharing :D
And it is pretty surprising that they got the rainforest elephant right.

This has certainly stirred up some memories as well.
I visited the US a couple of times as a kid and can remember Rainforest Café in Disney Springs very well. One of my favourite restaurants as a kid (although I do not remember much about the food) ^^

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Okay, but what about finding actual, non human content inside the cafè that we can put on iNaturalist?

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The restaurant has many locations. Maybe one reader of this post has a location in their city?

They can go and find cockroaches, mosquitoes . . . maybe Demodex mites if they’re ambitious . . . and post a reply in this thread!

Maybe there’s an existing project for iNatting restaurants?

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If people wish to learn more about the Rainforest Cafe, I highly recommend checking out this pair of videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA-bjpKvIw8&pp=ygUVZXZlcnkgcmFpbmZvcmVzdCBjYWZl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7InqrH1TCI8&pp=ygUVZXZlcnkgcmFpbmZvcmVzdCBjYWZl

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Thanks, Raymie!

For everyone else, if you were considering clicking the videos:

  • Both videos are about half an hour long (still 15 minutes on 2x)
  • Both videos involve YouTubers who ate at every Rainforest Café in America
  • Both videos cover a lot of the human aspect (the menu, the road trip, etc. . . . basically travelogues), but they do show a lot of the “wildlife” in the interiors of the restaurants

@AdamWargon I moved this to #naturetalk and I also am wondering why you didn’t frame this as some sort of discussion? What is your take on the article, and how does it relate to iNaturalist? What do you want people to get out of this article?

I, for one, would mention that, while a funny and interesting experiment, all of the observations should be identified as Human since they present no evidence of the organisms they depict.

Thanks for your guidance

I thought it was an interesting application of iNat’s CV

The article is about testing the iNaturalist CV to identify inanimate objects that are meant to resemble actual organisms

The post is intended to stimulate discussion. It could be taken in several directions, including:

  • Different models for engaging people in nature ID
  • How the public views nature
  • Partnerships between iNaturalist and Rainforest Café, as well as similar businesses (like zoos) that engage the public in nature
  • The accuracy of iNat’s CV

I could envision an AI that would say, This appears to be an artificial replica of an African forest elephant

The author is really providing us the sketch of a beautiful marketing campaign/elevator speech for iNaturalist.

As the author says: “A free app that can identify basically any species, provided your photo of it is not too shitty.”

No doubt word-for-word what our humble iNaturalist leaders have said during each round of substantial funding! And the second half obviously demonstrates the author is a faithful reader of this forum - surely @dianastuder and others approve of the admonition! :grin:

Could probably go on T-shirts?

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I apologize for the tone in my earlier message, it was rude. I’ll edit it. Please, though, it woudl be great to get some of your thoughts in the OP if/when you share an article.

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No really this is the best part. iNat in a nutshell.

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