What even IS that?

Back in the day, if you wanted to be able to identify plants, animals, and insects in the field, you had to either memorize them beforehand, or tote around field guides and learn to use taxonomic keys. Here’s an example from the Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide.

These days, we have apps of all kinds to help us identify just about anything we need to figure out and what a blessing that’s been. A couple of my personal favorites are the Merlin app (for birds) and the iNaturalist app for flora and fauna. Usually, they do pretty well in figuring out what your photo is of or what made a particular sound. Occasionally, however, you wonder if AI (that’s artificial intelligence, not your Uncle Al with issues) is drunk. Here are two recent examples that really cracked me up.

Box turtle?? I mean, insects and reptiles diverge all the way up to phylum! How exactly is something that looks like a moth or butterfly even remotely like any of those mammals??

Have you ever had a super weird/hilarious ID from one of your apps?