You know you're seriously into iNat when

Today I saw something on the wall, and when I leaned in to look, my first thought was “Pterygota.” File that one under “too much time thinking about unknowns.”

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I’ve started automatically saying the scientific names of things in my head when I see them. For example, I’ll hear a flicker and think “Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)” without even consciously deciding to. I also sometimes randomly remember scientific names for higher taxa, like “Order Polypodiales”, “Family Salticidae”, or “Infraorder Aculeata” for no reason that I can tell.

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Or enjoying the alliterative poetry of reciting, “Magnoliophyta, Magnoliopsida, Magnoliales.”

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I usually say names of lower taxa, like “Genus Stenaelurillus” or “Pachliopta aristolochiae”.

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…you are hiding Easter eggs and you have to suppress the pattern-matching part of your brain that yells “Strepsiptera!”

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… after a year of no travel more than 20 miles away from home, you finally get a COVID vaccination appointment an hour away in southern New Jersey (USA), and when you arrive you realize there is a little lake next to the CVS pharmacy where you will get the shot, so you pull out the new plankton net from the back of the car and go down to the lake and get some samples among canada geese poop, plastic junk, and some other abandoned items (while son waits in car, probably rather embarrassed over his mom), put the sample in in the car, go into the pharmacy and get the shot, and then think about all the things you will see in the microscope when you get home after the more then hour long drive home. Found some new things for our Personal Bioblitz on iNat!

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… you’re happy when in a roadtrip there is a traffic jam and you can make observations of animals and plants on the sides of the road

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MY MOM: Why is your arm bleeding so much!?!
ME: I tried to get a picture of the leech, but my SD card ran out of room…
MY MOM: (confused, just stares at me)
ME: …So I just pulled it off… (I pick up a SD card from table)
MY MOM: No more leeches! (she takes SD card from me)

I never got a picture of that leach…

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…you start seeing Latin elements in graffiti vandals’ tags:

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When you post on this forum.

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…the nightly activities on your wedding trip include searching and photographing moths.

The hotel room finds introduced back in 2019 where also pretty good. Mine was a considerable colony of Tineola bisseliella, which thrived in the wet wall-to-wall carpet in front of the mini kitchen.

Admittedly both were before iNaturalist, but I think they qualify anyway. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I do that! Both front and back! Sorry late to reply! I’m randomly going through past topics! Currently looking for :spider::spider::spider: and will find more as the temperature rises!

Yet I can seriously relate to you!

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Good question! But they do ask (in the US). It’s commonly called a “Personal Statement.”

Well honestly, I check on this thread often just to make sure it doesn’t closes!

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Good one

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And me

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Every day

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You know your seriously into iNat when you are only 13 and are at 40,000 IDs

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You know you’re seriously into iNat when you start to sort your wildlife photos taxonomically

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I do that

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