Nautilus

How I Became a Crowd-Sourced Zoologist

In the center of the photo, standing amid dry brush and trees, is something’s butt. I have 50-some animals to choose from, and I’m really not sure whose butt it is—maybe a duiker’s, a small, deer-like creature. “If you see an animal, please mark it,” the instructions say, “even if you’re not sure, or have no idea what it is.” Apparently, any errors will be filtered out. A duiker’s butt it is. Next image.

Candid: A photo of a lion in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, taken by one of ecologist Paola Bouley’s motion-triggered cameras.Paola Bouley/Wildcam Gorongosa.

Flipping through picture after picture of an African landscape, trying to identify any

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Nautilus

Nautilus7 min read
Lithium, the Elemental Rebel
Inside every rechargeable battery—in electric cars and phones and robot vacuums—lurks a cosmic mystery. The lithium that we use to power much of our lives these days is so common as to seem almost prosaic. But this element turns out to be a wild card
Nautilus10 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
How AI Can Save the Zebras
Tanya Berger-Wolf didn’t expect to become an environmentalist. After falling in love with math at 5 years old, she started a doctorate in computer science in her early 20s, attracting attention for her cutting-edge theoretical research. But just as s
Nautilus13 min read
The Shark Whisperer
In the 1970s, when a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a new movie based on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State University Long Beach. The lab at Cal State Long Beach was one of the first places

Related Books & Audiobooks