alt.hn

2/16/2026 at 9:12:07 PM

Show HN: Wildex – we built Pokémon Go for real wildlife

 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wildex-identify-plants-animals/id6748092158

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 10:59:36 PM

You have a snow leopard in your app screenshots. The Chinese woman just made the latest news cycles about being mauled by attempting to get a selfie with one. I hope those who use your app will ensure they are taking photos from a very safe distance.

by blorenz

2/16/2026 at 11:30:13 PM

(semi serious) are there any ways to distinguish photos from being taken up close with no barrier vs behind plexiglass in a zoo?

by swyx

2/16/2026 at 11:46:18 PM

I don’t think you’d want to solve for plexiglass since not all zoos have that but you could just cluster sightings and if you have 1000 sightings in a very particular location it wouldn’t be hard to identify.

by appplication

2/17/2026 at 12:31:52 AM

Zoos (and similar places that house animals) are generally pretty large. You could probably just use openstreet data to check where the player is.

by vunderba

2/16/2026 at 11:30:02 PM

The second photo is a tiger lunging at the camera ready to kill the user.

by deadbabe

2/17/2026 at 12:12:25 AM

[dead]

by cindyllm

2/16/2026 at 10:10:52 PM

Someone asked for the model you use but I am also curious how you handle ambiguous IDs. Not everything is clear cut especially when it comes to fungi and bugs.

Inaturalist uses second opinions what's your solution?

Edit: cool idea for the app btw, I always call inaturalist my Pokémon deck already so I think it's a nice new angle :)

by anotherpaul

2/17/2026 at 12:02:31 AM

I really don’t understand silent mode on the iPhone (and I’ve used iPhones since the OG!) but your app is one of those that ignores it.

Either obeying silent mode or having an option to disable the, admittedly pleasant, sounds would be very welcome.

by wrboyce

2/17/2026 at 1:35:58 AM

Good shout! thank you

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 10:36:54 PM

It appears the Wildex user in your 2nd screenshot is about to get mauled to death.

by gnatman

2/16/2026 at 10:59:27 PM

Wait, so you're saying going up to catch a mountain lion for my collection when I'm out on a hike is a bad idea...

by SunshineTheCat

2/16/2026 at 10:38:59 PM

Just as an example, we are currently at lady bird lake in Austin, tx and saw a turtle on the bank. It turned out to be a red eared slider turtle. The app informed us that they can breathe through their bottoms! Who knew!

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 11:31:51 PM

i thought this was more common than it is, but it's also not rare. Claude:

Around a dozen turtle species globally can breathe through their cloacas (rear openings), with roughly half living in Australian rivers. The main species that have truly mastered this ability include the Fitzroy River turtle, Mary River turtle, and white-throated snapping turtle. Additionally, some freshwater turtles like Blanding's turtle use a more limited form of cloacal respiration during hibernation when trapped under ice for extended periods. The Fitzroy River turtle is particularly impressive, obtaining up to 70% of its oxygen needs through cloacal respiration and staying submerged for up to 21 days. The white-throated snapping turtle can get nearly 70% of its oxygen this way as well. These turtles have specialized structures called cloacal bursae—sac-like organs with densely packed papillae (small blood vessel-rich structures)—that allow oxygen from water to diffuse directly into their bloodstream.

by swyx

2/16/2026 at 11:48:11 PM

I mostly use iNaturalist for foraging mushrooms, and have found it’s somewhat unreliable unless I already have an idea of what I’m looking for. How is this app set up for mushroom IDs? Sounds really fun and I love the concept but given some mushrooms are quite dangerous correct IDs are vital. I assume this also applies to plants?

by childofhedgehog

2/16/2026 at 11:49:28 PM

Mushrooms, mosses, invertebrates and even some plants seem to rely on specific small features that aren't always captured in photos of the thing to identify accurately down to the species level.

by s0rce

2/16/2026 at 11:05:21 PM

iNaturalist kind of did this already right? So it's like that with more fun dopamine hits and gamification? If it gets kids outside I think that is good.

by brikym

2/16/2026 at 11:18:19 PM

Hopefully it will not result in too many animals being harassed all day long.

by singularity2001

2/16/2026 at 11:09:37 PM

1) I love the idea, but there's not a lot of confidence building, "I'm not going to harvest and sell your data" vibe here.

2) I should get extra points if I discover a new species

by rossdavidh

2/16/2026 at 11:14:33 PM

1) agreed by the look of everyone’s comments we need to rephrase some things in the onboarding, apple review made us change it to be explicit as possible. 2) yes this is a great idea!! ‘You’re the first in the world to discover this’!! Thank you for that!!

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 11:26:54 PM

Why not Seek, the gamified version of iNaturalist?

by cluckindan

2/16/2026 at 10:09:54 PM

No go with all the tracking.

by herpdyderp

2/16/2026 at 10:19:01 PM

As people are requesting we will make a paid version pronto with no ads.

As per apple guidelines you can request us not to track and the app of course respects that.

The location data is used only for helping us narrow down the collection species!

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 10:05:33 PM

Thinking back to 2016 when Pogo launched there were news stories about trespassing, people getting hurt etc for virtual creatures...

I could easily see someone be foolish enough to go up to predators

by GNOMES

2/16/2026 at 10:12:36 PM

We thought about this and specifically decided not to award xp based on an animals danger rating.

Even though we warn users in the onboarding to take care in the wild, TikTok and similar platforms have shown people acting foolishly is not something you can fully control

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 10:21:13 PM

Do you put up anything when ID'ing a dangerous situation like "RUUUUUN!!!" or similar? Maybe a more serious idea would be to give some sort of visual indication of danger vs loading some text to read that says it's dangerous.

by dylan604

2/16/2026 at 10:30:32 PM

Yeah the first thing that comes up is a full page splash screen saying ‘DANGEROUS SPECIES Be careful’

So hopefully people will get the memo immediately!

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 11:43:39 PM

If i have learned anything about UX, it's that 1) people don't read, 2) people also don't read, and 3) if you have something important to tell them, don't make them read.

What that leaves you as options is pretty limited.

by shermantanktop

2/16/2026 at 11:47:03 PM

Cornell'd Merlin Bird ID and eBird are real life pokemon go!

by cantalopes

2/17/2026 at 12:16:40 AM

Has ads. Better to use Inaturalist or Seek.

by xnx

2/16/2026 at 10:07:29 PM

How does it identify the animals/plants? Is there a specialized model for that?

by echoangle

2/16/2026 at 11:00:13 PM

From the screenshots to the text feels AI slop. Haven't tried it but the store page doesn't give a good vibe and there are quite a few like this out there to make a quick buck.

by xandrius

2/16/2026 at 10:48:12 PM

DREAMPRESS.LTD > https://www.dreampress.ai/

It's all porn. Sigh, I hate this world. I really do feel like 2020 was the timeline alternating enigma event and we can never go back

by haunter

2/16/2026 at 10:00:40 PM

Can we get a paid version with no linking? Your 3rd party ad / tracking isn’t compatible with my desires.

Otherwise looks fun!

by bix6

2/16/2026 at 10:04:47 PM

Definitely soon, we just wanted to build a version that everyone can use regardless of income.

Unfortunately inference costs means we needed something (ads) to keep the servers online.

Out of curiosity what would you say is a fair price for this?

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 10:06:27 PM

I would not pay monthly but I would pay lifetime like 10 or 20 bucks.

Seek is free and good so if I’m paying for the fun aspect I would probably cap out around $20

Edit: might even be able to pull off like $10/yr but I’m increasingly tired of those as well

by bix6

2/16/2026 at 10:13:05 PM

Nice thank you so much!

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 9:51:41 PM

Why not iNaturalist?

by kylenessen

2/16/2026 at 10:02:42 PM

iNaturalist is great for identification and information, but it lacked the fun and soul we were looking for.

It doesn’t feel like you’re playing when you use it, it feels like you’re in biology class (no hate to them).

Wildex gives you cute fun facts and lets you build up points for rare species finds. It feels like a completely different experience.

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 10:16:42 PM

> It doesn’t feel like you’re playing when you use it

That's a feature, not a bug. Gamifying nature is a bad idea. It's tourism, but with the worst kind of tourists.

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 10:27:01 PM

Respectfully disagree here, the more people you could get outside appreciating and learning about nature, the better it can be preserved for future generations. Whether it’s gamified or not.

by AnujNayyar

2/16/2026 at 10:46:57 PM

> the more people you could get outside appreciating and learning about nature, the better it can be preserved for future generations.

I don't know about that. We are with so many people now and there is so little nature left. The Pokemon 'Go' craze showed what happens when you set gamification and outdoors on the same track. It just doesn't scale in the same way that virtual things do.

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 10:25:20 PM

At the same time, learning doesn't have to be boring. Most people don't care about the family/class/genus lineage. They just want to know a) what it is, b) some other interesting facts. Sure, have a link to the drudgery, but having something fun/interesting that gets/keeps people excited about going outside and enjoying nature is not a bad idea. Just because gamifying has been used for bad by others doesn't mean it's bad for everything. Nose, despite face; baby/bathwater types of things come to mind here.

by dylan604

2/16/2026 at 10:27:54 PM

Fully agree here.

by AnujNayyar