And here is yet another which makes no sense at all. When I post a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher with the English name of the bird as the filename, iNat immediately prefills “Characids” for me. This is not helpful at all. It means I have to remove Characids and either let iNat identify the bird using AI (which works fine) or I have to fill in Scissor-tailed Flycatcher by hand. Digging further I found that “Scissor macrocephalus” is a species of characin fish endemic to Suriname and the only member of its genus. What are the chances that’s what intended? Why doesn’t it prefill Scissor Fish since the genus is unique? Why is fixing this so difficult? I am getting quite discouraged by iNat’s intransigence on this simple issue.
1 Like
there is an inactive genus Scissor that has been merged into Characidae. that means Scissor gets translated to Characidae.
3 Likes
The biggest issue for me is with ladybirds (as I have mentioned somewhere else recently). “##-Spot Ladybird” gets uploaded as “Spot Croaker” (a fish!). Their scientific names are invariably so unweildy (Tytthaspis sedecimpunctata or subcoccinella vigintiquatuorpunctata anyone?) that I prefer to stick to the common name and try to weed out the fish IDs!
2 Likes