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FAQ
Volunteering hours - confirmation for school assignment, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award etc.
Go to the Education section.
Hashtags - how do they work?
Hashtags can be used to mark interesting behaviour in photos or good image examples of a species. These photos can be searched by the used “keywords” at any time later. Please, make sure to only hashtag animal species you are confident of and present in the photo; otherwise, the search results will give us false results and mislead other volunteers. We prefer that you use existing hashtags from the proposed hashtag list - it pops up after typing the # symbol and the first letters of the keyword. If the keyword doesn’t appear in the list, don’t forget to use the underscore “_” instead of the space between words. Otherwise, the distance between the words will break your hashtag. To search for images using hashtags, either click on a hashtag anywhere on the Talk page or type/copy&paste the hashtag into the search box (at the top of the Talk page) - don’t forget to include the # symbol.
There are three important hashtags in addition to those used to refer to animal species (including us! ):
- #tagged (for individuals who carry a tag/band/ring, etc.)
- #predation (for photos where you can see some predatory behaviour or its consequences)
- #unhealthy (sick-looking, for example, skinny, with cutaneous injuries or lesions, etc.)
- #reproduction (if you see cubs, pups, or other clearly baby animals)
Not sure what species it is
There are quite a few circumstances that can make classification difficult. Nighttime images are more difficult than daytime images. This is especially true for some species, such as cervids (red deer and fallow deer) and leporids (rabbits and hares). The color and type of coat (see details in the FIELD GUIDE) that usually help you differentiate them, tend to become useless in the nighttime images. Sometimes, the image is not of enough quality (e.g. fuzzy), or the animal is too far, too close, or behind a visual obstacle. Just make it the best you can. In these examples, the type of tag you may want to mark is one of: Cervid, Leporid, or Unrecognizable.
That species is not among the tags
Actually, you have a tag for that, it is Other species.
I can see only a part of the animal
Okay, this happens quite often when the animal wants to scratch on that beautiful thing (the camera traps), the humans kindly put in here (or wants to smell it). Usually, in these cases, you'll have to decide between two options: 1) you’re not at all sure what it is (choose Unrecognizable), 2) you can say it's a cervid, but not if it's a red or fallow deer (choose cervid).
I have a question that I cannot solve either with the TUTORIAL, or with the FIELD GUIDE, or with this section
At the end of your classification task, you will see the Talk button. By pressing it, you will be able to send us your question(s), which we will try to answer as soon as possible.
I can see more than 1 animal species
Sometimes you can see more than one animal species in the same photo. In such cases, please choose both classes - first select one of them (e.g., a cow), count all the animals and click on "Identify", then select the other species (e.g., red deer) and click on "Identify". Then check out the bottom part of the image - you should see blue labels with both identified categories displayed there. If you accidentally chose the wrong category, you can remove it by clicking on the tiny cross on the blue label before finishing the classification by "Done" /" Done&Talk".
The image is bad/too dark, and there's no animal
If you cannot see any part or outline of an animal, select the "No animal" category.