Teacher asking students to use iNat to ID photos being shown over Zoom?

General
#1

I follow Chiroptera, and am seeing a number of observations of the same photo of a taxidermied bat taken on a cell phone of a laptop screen. The users that posted the bat also posted a sea star and a photo of a butterfly collection. I’m not sure how to approach this- normally I’d ask the user to only post their own photos or make sure that a photo of a photo’s location is accurate. However, this seems something that should maybe be handled by someone who isn’t just a random user. Let me know if I’m wrong and should just handle it myself!

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60367488
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60472216
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60467486
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60467567

(another thought I just had was that maybe this is a bad attempt at cheating on a quiz?)

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#2

The tricky part is that aside from location, it could be considered their own photo.
e.g., imagine a class trip to a wildlife rehabilitation center where students photograph the tour guide showing them an animal currently at the center.
This could be a similar setup, except of course that the tour guide is remote rather than physically standing before the students.

We are supposed to assume good faith observations, so why not ask the observers about the circumstance of the photo?

If you feel comfortable doing so, maybe post a comment asking if they can give some background info. Something like:
“Can you tell us more about this observation to help us identify it? When and where did the person holding it originally collect it from? Why were they showing it on this call?”

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#3

I noticed you down-voted evidence of organism on one of them.

Given the varying map locations among these 4, I think it would be more accurate to down-vote that the location is accurate, as there is clearly evidence of an organism.

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#4

It does indeed look like a virtual class trip:

I searched for Chiki Ciencia (from the lab coat and box) and found this site, which has the same logo and even shows them presenting taxidermied bats:
https://chikiciencia.com/2018/09/20/conociendo-a-los-animales/

So in your place, I would ask if they know the actual date and location of collection, and mark date & location as inaccurate in the mean time.

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#5

Sounds like a fair solution, thank you! I just wanted to make sure I didn’t do anything outside of iNat norms.

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#6

Also, thank you for finding the program running this virtual tour! I’m always happy when I see people getting educated about bats, especially in formative years. Last thing I would want to do is discourage young people from wanting to learn and explore the platform!

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#7

Anytime!
FYI: on the plush toy, instead of marking it as no evidence, you can just ID it as human.

(1) Technically, it is a human artifact.
(2) Humans observations are automatically marked casual, so it keeps them out of the RG pool.
(3) It is inaccurate to mark it as no evidence, because it is evidence. It is evidence of one or more Humans. :)

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