What Was That? opspoor's AI Can Tell You From One Photo

You've just seen something. You're fairly sure it's an antelope, you're fairly sure it's not an impala, and that's about where your certainty ends. Normally that means flipping through a field guide, asking whoever's next to you, or logging the sighting as "unknown" and moving on — and by the time you've settled the debate, the animal's gone and so is the moment.

opspoor's new AI Species Identification skips all of that. Point your camera at it, and the app tells you what it's looking at — right there, in the field, with no signal required.

How it works

From the "What did you see?" step of logging a sighting, tap Scan a Photo. Take a new photo or pick one from your gallery, then crop in on the animal to frame it cleanly — the model does better with a tight, well-lit crop than a wide shot with half the bush in frame. Hit confirm, and opspoor's model gets to work.

A moment later you get a clear answer, ranked by confidence, with a match percentage attached. Confirm it, and that species is already filled in as you move into the sighting form — photo included. Not convinced? Tap "not this" and pick manually from the list, no harm done, no lost progress.

Why it matters that this runs on your phone

Most AI photo tools work by sending your image to a server somewhere and waiting for an answer. That's a real problem in a wildlife park, where you're often exactly as far from a signal tower as you are close to the animal you're trying to identify.

opspoor's model lives on your device. It downloads once and runs locally from then on — identification works the same deep in the bush with zero bars as it does standing at the entrance gate, in keeping with everything else opspoor does offline: logging sightings, browsing the feed, checking the map. Nothing about this feature waits for a connection, and nothing about your photo leaves your phone just to get an answer.

204 species, and it knows when it's not sure

The current model — now on its fifth generation, trained and re-trained on an expanding set of real sighting photos — recognises 204 species, and it's built to be honest about its limits. If a photo doesn't clear a minimum confidence bar, opspoor doesn't guess just to give you an answer — it tells you it isn't sure, and suggests a closer or better-lit photo instead.

It's also aware of where you are. opspoor knows which species are actually on the checklist for the park you're currently in, and it weighs its ranking accordingly — so if you're in a South African reserve, it isn't wasting confidence treating an East African savanna species as equally likely. That local knowledge doesn't rule anything out outright; it just makes sure the answer at the top of the list is the one that actually makes sense for where you're standing.

Think of it as a fast, well-informed second opinion — not a replacement for your own eyes or a proper field guide. It's there to get you from "no idea" to "logged" in a few taps, not to settle scientific debates.

Try it on your next drive

AI Species Identification is live now for everyone on Android, free to use, with iOS coming soon. Next time you spot something you can't place, let your phone take the first guess — then log it properly, photo and all, before you've even put the camera down.

See AI Species Identification in detail →