Our Observation of the Week is this Bluespotted Fantail Ray (Taeniura lymma), seen off of Kenya by @dzivulajr_03!

Dzivula Gube was born in coast Kenyan, around the town of Malindi, but unfortunately did not spend much time in the ocean.

As a kid, I grew up not knowing much about what lies below the waves due to some community laws that prohibited kids from going into the ocean. We were told to believe that the ocean was the biggest enemy for kids. For me, those were the saddest moments in my life as I [later] came to realize how beautiful it is being under the world’s finest wilderness.

With the ongoing climate change campaigns, it was not too long before I realized that something was not right within our nature. Forests were disappearing at a very fast rate, wild animals dying of hunger, corals bleaching and dying due to increase in atmospheric temperatures. Fishermen were greatly impacted, and so was I. It was a pity not knowing what to do to help solve the crisis.

During his third year at university, Dzivula took his first scuba dive.

It was the best feeling I have ever had. One thing immediately caught my sight, it was the beautiful schools of fish (Lutjanus kasmira - as I came to learn later) swimming around a reef. This was the moment that the seed for my passion and love for nature was sowed into my life. The questions that I got from my family and friends about the underwater world really prompted me to think of carrying a camera on my next dive. Since that day the C in SCUBA has meant something else, something like a camera. I don't want to dive without it. Each time I am on a coral reef restoration dive, I take the camera with me. I love taking photos of fish and corals and telling story about not only the beauty of our underwater world but also the need for us to protect it.

Still diving, Dzivula currently works as a reef ranger at Shimoni with Reefolution Kenya, and also as a photographer, filmmaker, and storyteller with AFRISOS. While on a dive last month, Dzivula came across the colorful ray you see above.

Each time I get out of the water from a dive I usually feel happy, having contributed something towards nature conservation and looking forward to my next dive. It was one of these fine moments that I came across the Taeniura lymma relaxing within our artificial reefs. I had to be cautious not to scare it off given that they usually tend to be super shy. Took some shots starting from a bit far but each time adjusting my distance by moving closer and closer. It was so relaxed. This shot was from just about 3 cm away from the camera (Nikon Coolpix)...

On the boat after the dive, all I was thinking about was getting to my computer as fast as possible to upload the photo to iNaturalist. After all, I wasn't sure about the species name.

Ranging throughout much of the Indian and western Pacific Oceans, bluespotted fantail rays are small bottom feeders (about 35 cm/ 14 in wide) that rest in reefs and other shelters during the day before heading out at night to hunt. While shy, this ray does possess defensive venomous spines on its tail (which has two electric blue stripes). It’s listed as “Least Concern” by the IUCN Redlist, and it’s caught for food in some areas. It’s also sometimes caught for aquarium use but generally does not survive long in captivity.

Dzivula (above) was introduced to iNaturalist just a few months ago by a friend. 

It has really helped me with species identification. In addition to giving me the opportunity to interact with different people around the world and morale to continue uploading new observations, it also helps me learn new species, especially fish. With iNaturalist I get to see new organisms that I never thought existed. Each day, iNaturalist brings you something to light your day!

(Photo of Dzivula by TonyWild. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)

- You can follow Dzivula on Twitter and Instagram.

- Here’s some cool bluespotted fantail ray footage.

- Check out this article on the “trabecular cartilage” that’s in cownose ray (Rhinoptera bonasus) jaws.

- @gurveena, another marine conservationist in Kenya, photographed a lizard that was a previous Observation of the Week!

Thank you for earning iNaturalist the reputation as the nicest place online!

We're thrilled iNaturalist was featured on the front page of the Sunday New York Times in a very interesting piece written by @amy_harmon. And we're also extremely proud of iNaturalist's reputation that her article celebrates as a positive, collaborative, and constructive corner of the internet. This is a reflection of you - the incredible community of participants who use iNaturalist. Thank you so much for all of the knowledge, kindness, and passion you've given and continue to give to this site.

You can check out the article here (link will work for non-subscribers) and there's a thread about the article on the iNat forum.

The word cloud below was generated from 1,000,000 words randomly selected from the ~200,000 comments posted to iNaturalist in the last month. I made it because I was hoping to see Thank and Please featured prominently, and they are :)

We released a new computer vision model today. It has 67,553 taxa, up from 66,214. This new model (v1.4) was trained on data exported last month on October 9th and added 1,383 new taxa to the model it has replaced (v1.3).

Taxa differences to previous model

The charts below summarize these 1,383 new taxa using the same groupings we described in past release posts.

By category, most of these 1,403 new taxa were insects and plants

Here are species level examples of new species added for each category:

• Other Animalia
• Mollusca
• Aves
• Fungi
• Reptilia
• Plantae
• Insecta
• Actinopterygii
• Amphibia
• Chromista
• Arachnida
• Mammalia

Click on the links to see these taxa in the Explore page to see these samples rendered as species lists. Remember, to see if a particular species is included in the currently live computer vision model, you can look at the “About” section of its taxon page.

We couldn't do it without you

Thank you to everyone in the iNaturalist community who makes this work possible! Sometimes the computer vision suggestions feel like magic, but it’s truly not possible without people. None of this would work without the millions of people who have shared their observations and the knowledgeable experts who have added identifications.

In addition to adding observations and identifications, here are other ways you can help:

• Share your Machine Learning knowledge: iNaturalist’s computer vision features wouldn’t be possible without learning from many colleagues in the machine learning community. If you have machine learning expertise, these are two great ways to help:
• Participate in the annual iNaturalist challenges: Our collaborators Grant Van Horn and Oisin Mac Aodha continue to run machine learning challenges with iNaturalist data as part of the annual Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference. By participating you can help us all learn new techniques for improving these models.
• Start building your own model with the iNaturalist data now: If you can’t wait for the next CVPR conference, thanks to the Amazon Open Data Program you can start downloading iNaturalist data to train your own models now. Please share with us what you’ve learned by contributing to iNaturalist on Github.
• Donate to iNaturalist: For the rest of us, you can help by donating! Your donations help offset the substantial staff and infrastructure costs associated with training, evaluating, and deploying model updates. Thank you for your support!

Our Observation of the Week is this Black Mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis), seen in Tanzania by @thbecker!

Thomas Becker grew up in the German town of Arnstadt, next to the Thuringian Forest. For over two decades, Thomas worked as a journalist and editor in chief at a local paper. “I used to be more of someone who could enjoy nature but saw it more as a setting for activities (hiking, cross-country skiing),” he says, “[but] about ten years ago, my attitude changed fundamentally.”

And that was because at that time I moved with my wife from Germany to Tanzania, where we have been working in tourism ever since. I have always been a passionate photographer, but more interested in landscapes than details. Now, living at the foot of the mighty Kilimanjaro, I dived deeper into nature than ever before.

About four years ago, Thomas and his wife Heike began managing the Lake Chala Safari Lodge, within sight of Kilimanjaro. “Here, in a 580-hectare protected area, our passion for nature has intensified once again. Until then, I had only used iNaturalist occasionally to identify animals or plants, but in 2020 we launched the Lake Chala Wildlife project to document the impressive biodiversity of the area.” 

Nearly 700 observations of almost 300 species have been recorded in the project so far, and three of those observations record encounters with black mambas. 

[The snake above] is not the first black mamba we've seen here, but it's the biggest. And it was the first one that wasn't in a tree or disappeared straight away. I was sitting on the terrace in front of our house when the snake came closer. It registered my presence, raised its head slightly, but showed no form of defensive behaviour. I was able to get the camera and take pictures while it was observing the surroundings and possibly looking for food. We have many rock agamas living here, but also other potential prey. After a while she turned around and disappeared into the bushes. An encounter of a very special kind.

Africa’s longest venomous snake (2 m/ 6 ft 7 in), black mambas are quick diurnal predators that feed on birds, small mammals, and similar prey. The black mamba often moves with its head and neck raised, scoping out its surroundings. When threatened, it will try to escape but, if cornered, flattens its neck and opens its mouth, displaying black mouth tissue. Black mambas range throughout much of eastern and southern Sub-Saharan Africa.

Thomas (above, at Sequoia National Park), joined iNat just over four years ago, and uses it not only to document organisms around Lake Chela, but also when he travels.

Wherever I am now, I look around much more consciously, enjoy both the big and the small animals and try to learn something about them. Knowing what's living in the neighbourhood also means taking a closer look at it. It's no longer just a bird, but a Verraux's Eagle circling in the sky. How big is it, what does it eat? Are the snakes around us dangerous? How should one behave in nature? What can one do to protect the environment?

I have learned so much from iNaturalist. Or rather, through the people who make iNaturalist what it is. A huge database that unites experts and amateurs in an effort to better understand nature, identify developments and help conserve habitats.

(Photo of Thomas by Heike Becker)

Our Observation of the Week is this Urchin Carrier Crab (Dorippe frascone) carrying a Blue-spotted Urchin (Astropyga radiata)! Seen in The Philippines by @albertkang. 

Originally from Malaysia, Albert Kang has been living in The Philippines since 2002. In 2006 he stopped working and got into scuba diving, which reignited his long-held interest in nature. “Scuba diving,” he says, “opens up a whole new world of underwater marine life and was fascinated with it.”

When some friends from Belgium recently came to visit him, they went diving at Anilao, Batangas, Philippines, where Albert dives regularly.  “A Filipino friend owns a dive resort there and I go there very regularly and also bring friends from other countries to dive there :D,” he tells me.

Usually, this crab is only active at night but this dive was during a bad weather day and by 5 pm, it was already getting dark underwater.  The dive was at a muck dive site, meaning sandy bottom. The crab was scurrying around, carrying the sea urchin, which is always interesting to see since the crab by itself is drab in colour and not too interesting/exciting.  The bright colours of the sea urchin make it stand out, in addition to the interesting symbiotic relationship behaviour.

A small species (its carapace grows to about 5 cm (2 in)), the urchin carrier crab often uses its rear two pairs of legs to hold an urchin, leaving its two front non-pincer legs free for walking. It’s thought the urchin provides protection for a crab, and the crab brings it to new areas to feed, benefiting both partners.

“I am more of a generalist,” says Albert (above, taking a selfie with a Wallace’s Flying Frog in Malaysia), “meaning I take pictures of most things but more on the smaller stuff for macro photography. The joy is more of ‘searching’ and ‘finding’ tiny critters that are often overlooked and seldom photographed.” He joined iNat over seven years ago and tells me that after doing so  “I am spending more time out in the field to take pics and looking for new stuff.”

- Two phasmids have been described based Albert’s photos: Orthomeria kangi, from Philippines in 2016, and Orthonecroscia keatsooni from Malaysia in 2016. Albert tells me several more species are currently being described, based on his findings.

-  Cool footage of an urchin carrier crab and its buddy.

As you may know, we've been trying to hire an engineer to focus on mobile app development since this summer, and I'm happy to announce that we kind of ended up with two! Angie Ta is our new full-time React Native engineer, and she'll be focusing on the new cross-platform mobile app we've been developing. Angie lives in the Bay Area region of California like most of the team, but she's originally from Florida. She loves the water, speaks almost-fluent Cantonese, and can tell the rest of us what anime people actually watch these days.

During the hiring process we also interviewed Johannes, an avid iNat user from Germany. Due to the complexities of hiring internationally (something we learned about during this round of hiring) and the fact that we'd found another good candidate in the US, we decided not work with him as a full-time hire, but we really wanted to work with him in some capacity, and we had some funds allocated for a contractor, so we decided to work with him on contract instead. Johannes will also be focusing on mobile app development, though he'll be splitting time between the new iNaturalist app and Seek. Johannes is an expert in the family Crassulaceae, and in making Most, which he says is "not really cider" but really sounds a lot like cider.

Anyway, please welcome these two new members of the team!

Our Observation of the Week is this Bassia bassensis siphonophore, seen off of New Zealand by @luca_dt!

As a child, Luca Davenport-Thomas tells me “I would always love rock pooling or flipping rocks on the beach to find amazing things but it is only recently, about the same time as I signed up to iNaturalist, that I really started looking. 

When I started doing nature photography with my compact camera (Olympus TG-6) I began to take pictures of the tiniest and most amazing things…

I will usually snorkel in a marine reserve which hosts some extraordinary biodiversity, not far from where I live in Wellington. When I snorkel I am often searching for nudibranchs, and anything else interesting I find along the way is a bonus.

On a recent snorkeling outing north of Wellington, Luca came across the creature you see above.

Although Nudibranchs are my favourite things to search for, I admit that the most amazing snorkels I have are when there is a plankton bloom. From time to time we get amazing salp blooms filled with siphonophores, jellyfish and other incredible alien-like creatures. And sometimes a member of these blooms are the Bassia bassensis siphonophores. They are possibly the most unbelievable siphonophore to see. With their strange symmetrical, geometric shape and vivid white edges, they look like a digital 3D model come to reality. Swimming through them and all the other plankton feels like being on another world.

Siphonophores are actually colonial organisms, composed of smaller zooid organisms that are specialized for certain functions like predation, locomotion, reproduction, etc. Bassia bassensis feeds mostly on copepods by using its stinging tentacles, and reaches a length of 6-8 centimeters. Perhaps the most well known siphonophore is the Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), and another siphonophore, the giant siphonophore (Praya dubia), can grow up to 40 m (130 ft).

Luca (above) is currently working toward a master’s degree in marine biology and studies Lepas Gooseneck barnacles, but he also hopes to one day participate in some deep sea exploration. He joined iNat last May, mostly for nudibranch ID help, 

but I quickly realised that a lot of the things I was observing were hardly or not at all observed before. This sparked my passion to keep exploring and learning along the way. Quickly, I became a part of a great community who share similar interests. Using iNaturalist I have become way more knowledgeable of marine life taxonomy. It is quite amazing to think how little I knew before, and how only in the short time I’ve used iNaturalist, it has completely opened my mind.

(Photo of Luca by Nadine McGrath)

- Here’s a good intro video to siphonophores and other colonial marine organisms.

- Check out the most-faved siphonophore observations on iNat!

- This Bassia bassensis is bizarre for sure, but is it as bizarre as the “chiton crab” seen in New Zealand back in 2014 by @emily_r?

Our Observation of the Week is this African Silverbill (Euodice cantans) using a weaverbird nest in Nigeria! Seen by @harooon.

Haruna Mohammed Abubakar says that, as a child growing up in Maiduguri, Nigeria, “nature has always been part of my life, for as long as I can remember.” He always enjoyed birds as a youngster, but in the early-to-mid-1990s he stumbled up on Birds of West Africa by William Serle and Gerard J. Morel and Birds of the West African Town and Garden by John H. Elgood. “These books,” he says, “opened the door for me to see that birds have fascinating lives that really are a joy to sit back and watch.”

Having obtained a masters degree in Psychology, Haruna teaches psychology classes at a college in Potiskum, Nigeria and spends much of his free time birding. 

My curiosity lies in birds and their habitat, specifically focused on bird watching and mental health. The mindful nature of birdwatching makes it both a happy and healing hobby. I believe birdwatching allows us to switch off from the mechanical world and get back to nature, to re-boot our system, which can go far in regulating our moods and behaviour.

Since 2018, Haruna has been volunteering for the Nigerian Bird Atlas Project (NiBAP), and he represents it in northeastern Nigeria. Last October he was in the town of Kukuri, birding for NiBAP.

While in the field I learned that many of the more interesting or hard-to-find species may be lurking in more remote areas away from human activity. For that reason I put more effort to reach them as we did in this trip, together with my colleague. 

We walked down to scrub bushes, watching birds and exploring nature, and I spotted a short tree. On it there was only a dangling nest, what looked like an abandoned weaverbird (Ploceus vitellinus) nest. I heard the calls from a distance which I recognized as coming from an African silverbill (Euodice cantans), emanating continuously from the direction of the nest. As I approached the tree, suddenly one of the birds flew and perched by the nest side. I swooped my camera in its direction, hoping to get a perfect shot, when a second bird appeared from nowhere and its attention was to get into the nest without considering us as a threat. It went in and came out and back again for some time and came out. I was amazed and my experience with this observation lasted just a couple of minutes - a flash and it was gone. But it will stay with me a lifetime as it was the first time I observed  Euodice cantans utilizing an abandoned weaver bird nest.

African silverbills (Euodice cantans) like dry, grassy, and scrubby areas and range through much of the areas south of the Sahara Desert. They have also been introduced to other places like Portugal, Qatar, and Hawaii. Males generally gather all the nesting materials and both members of the pair build the nest. According to Finch Info, they are known to use abandoned nests as well, although I couldn’t find that information elsewhere. 

Haruna (above, in Kainji National Park) had been hearing about iNat and joined up earlier this month. He’s uploaded his photos from 2018 to the present,

and right now I’m having positive interactions with many experts in the field of ornithology and my knowledge is really improving - not only in ornithology but as well as other taxa. Using iNaturalist allows me to connect with absolute nature lovers, people that have passion and knowledge on different categories of biological resources, and that strengthens my commitment to conserve birds and their habitat.

(Photo of Haruna was taken by A.S Ringim. Some quotes have been edited for clarity.)

- Here’s some footage African silverbills making their own nest.

-  Sir David Attenborough narrates this video showing weaverbird nest construction.

We released a new computer vision model today. It has 66,214 taxa, up from 64,884.

This new model (v1.3) is the second we’ve trained in about a month using the new faster approach, but it’s the first with a narrow ~1 month interval between the export of the data it was trained on and the export of the data the model it is replacing (v1.2) was trained on. The previous model (v1.2) was replacing a model (v1.1) trained on data exported in April so there was a 4 month interval between these data exports (interval between A and B in the figure below). This 4 month interval is why model 1.2 added ~5,000 new taxa to the model. The new model (v1.3) was trained on data exported just 37 days after the data used to train model 1.2 (interval between B and C in the figure below) and added 1,368 new taxa.

While our goal is to maintain this ~1 month interval, we caution that this is getting more and more challenging as the iNaturalist dataset continues to grow. Expect the interval to lengthen unless we secure improved training hardware or devise improvements to the way we generate a training set or train the models themselves. However, it’s fun to look at this comparison between models 1.3 and 1.2 and imagine what maintaining this pace of a new model and about 1,000 new taxa a month would be like.

Taxa differences to previous model

The charts below summarize these 1,368 new taxa using the same groupings we described in the 1.2 release post.

By category, most of these 1,368 new taxa were insects and plants

Here are species level examples of new species added for each category:

• Plantae
• Other Animalia
• Mollusca
• Reptilia
• Insecta
• Protozoa
• Aves
• Arachnida
• Chromista
• Amphibia
• Fungi
• Mammalia
• Actinopterygii

Click on the links to see these taxa in the Explore page to see these samples rendered as species lists.

Remember, to see if a particular species is included in the currently live computer vision model, you can look at the “About” section of its taxon page.

We couldn't do it without you

Thank you to everyone in the iNaturalist community who makes this work possible! Sometimes the computer vision suggestions feel like magic, but it’s truly not possible without people. None of this would work without the millions of people who have shared their observations and the knowledgeable experts who have added identifications.

In addition to adding observations and identifications, here are other ways you can help:

• Share your Machine Learning knowledge: iNaturalist’s computer vision features wouldn’t be possible without learning from many colleagues in the machine learning community. If you have machine learning expertise, these are two great ways to help:
• Participate in the annual iNaturalist challenges: Our collaborators Grant Van Horn and Oisin Mac Aodha continue to run machine learning challenges with iNaturalist data as part of the annual Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference. By participating you can help us all learn new techniques for improving these models.
• Start building your own model with the iNaturalist data now: If you can’t wait for the next CVPR conference, thanks to the Amazon Open Data Program you can start downloading iNaturalist data to train your own models now. Please share with us what you’ve learned by contributing to iNaturalist on Github.
• Donate to iNaturalist: For the rest of us, you can help by donating! Your donations help offset the substantial staff and infrastructure costs associated with training, evaluating, and deploying model updates. Thank you for your support!

Our Observation of the Day is this Nose-horned Viper (Vipera ammodytes), seen in Kosovo by @liridonshala!

“I grew up among wonderful nature near Peja,” says Liridon Shala, “which is the most beautiful part of my country.” So he’s been interested in nature and its protection for nearly all of his life. Now, as pharmacist living the city of Prizren, he’s focused on nature photography. “With my photos, I want to show people about the beauties we have, like birds, animals, and everything that belongs to the wild world…My main goal is to document my country's species, and educate the younger generations to protect them and nature.”

A few weeks ago, Liridon and a friend traveled to Albania on a photography trip. They weren’t particularly happy with their finds, but on their way back they came across a nose-horned viper on the road. They pulled over but it took them a moment to re-find it after it slithered to some nearby stones. “Due to its camouflage, we couldn’t find it on the stones. When we did spot it, I started to take some pictures, but I was worried there might be others nearby.”

Occurring in mostly rocky habitats from Italy through the Balkans and into Turkey and Syria, nose-horned vipers are relatively large (growing up to about one meter) and their fangs can be about 13 mm in length. Adults eat mostly small mammals and birds, and younger snakes are known to eat invertebrates like centipedes. Their venom is considered medically significant to humans, but like just about any snake they prefer to warn or escape rather than bite. The “horn” on the nose is composed of scales and is reputed to be soft to the touch (but don’t try to touch it, please).

Liridon (above) joined iNat a few years ago. Not only has he added over 500 observations, he’s also part of a team that’s worked on translating it into Albanian. He mostly uses it as a personal portfolio for his photographs, and as a place to learn.

(Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)

- You can check out Liridon’s photos on Instagram!

- Take a look at the most-faved observations in Kosovo!