Metazooa
August 24, 2023 10:25 AM Subscribe
Wow, yeah I got it in 7 but still felt like it was kind of a wild guess. Very fun tho. I guess another daily game to add to the Wordle type games.
posted by MrBobaFett at 10:40 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by MrBobaFett at 10:40 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
oh that is really fun!
posted by supermedusa at 10:43 AM on August 24, 2023
posted by supermedusa at 10:43 AM on August 24, 2023
I'm unreasonably pleased to see that there is a practice game option. Usually when I have fun with a guessing game, I wanna go back and do all the previous days before I burn out and forget about it (because I can't form a habit for the life of me) but I love the instant creature gratification.
posted by fountainofdoubt at 10:49 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by fountainofdoubt at 10:49 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I love it. But they need to add more animals. Their autocomplete shows the valid animals (which avoids endlessly guessing species not in their database) but it seems to be only about 10 to 20 per first character. So they've got no more than 500 animals? Perfect 20-guessing could distinguish 1 million animals (2^20). As it is, it seems doing well with 7 guesses ought to get it right on average.
But the fun is the information they provide along the way...
posted by brambleboy at 10:56 AM on August 24, 2023 [3 favorites]
But the fun is the information they provide along the way...
posted by brambleboy at 10:56 AM on August 24, 2023 [3 favorites]
This was great!!
posted by honeybee413 at 11:04 AM on August 24, 2023
posted by honeybee413 at 11:04 AM on August 24, 2023
It took me 10 guesses and I admit I finally looked at Wikipedia because I could not think of any more animals that fit the criteria, I guess my animal knowledge is narrow.
posted by muddgirl at 11:14 AM on August 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 11:14 AM on August 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is so my wheelhouse.
Got it in like four guesses but some of the practice tests were much harder. In one case I actually needed to google to get ideas of members of Camelidae that were not, in fact, "camel."
Very strong vertebrate and, beyond that, mammal bias. Not a complaint, just an observation.
posted by mark k at 11:24 AM on August 24, 2023 [3 favorites]
Got it in like four guesses but some of the practice tests were much harder. In one case I actually needed to google to get ideas of members of Camelidae that were not, in fact, "camel."
Very strong vertebrate and, beyond that, mammal bias. Not a complaint, just an observation.
posted by mark k at 11:24 AM on August 24, 2023 [3 favorites]
Once again my inability to differentiate the words "nutria" and "nutella" hampers success.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:29 AM on August 24, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:29 AM on August 24, 2023 [6 favorites]
The site is starting to have performance issues, unfortunately. I got 3 guesses in and it stopped responding.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:37 AM on August 24, 2023
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:37 AM on August 24, 2023
The FAQ does describe that it uses a particular classification system and tried to bias towards animals more commonly known. 14 tries here, and taking breaks helped me reset mentally.
posted by cobaltnine at 11:43 AM on August 24, 2023
posted by cobaltnine at 11:43 AM on August 24, 2023
Oh, there's no way you could do this without biasing towards well known stuff!
I used to keep tropical fish, so I'd like a few more options, but at the same time I'm imagining narrowing it down to corydoras and thinking "Well, now I just have 161 guesses left!"
And let's not even start on god's inordinate fondness for beetles.
posted by mark k at 12:15 PM on August 24, 2023 [12 favorites]
I used to keep tropical fish, so I'd like a few more options, but at the same time I'm imagining narrowing it down to corydoras and thinking "Well, now I just have 161 guesses left!"
And let's not even start on god's inordinate fondness for beetles.
posted by mark k at 12:15 PM on August 24, 2023 [12 favorites]
Got it in 8. I love stuff like this though.
I'm doing a practice game where I've narrowed it down to non-decapod crustaceans, and the database doesn't have any of the critters I'd use to narrow it down further. No king crabs, and I can't just enter lithodid! Also no barnacles!
posted by fnerg at 12:39 PM on August 24, 2023
I'm doing a practice game where I've narrowed it down to non-decapod crustaceans, and the database doesn't have any of the critters I'd use to narrow it down further. No king crabs, and I can't just enter lithodid! Also no barnacles!
posted by fnerg at 12:39 PM on August 24, 2023
9 guesses, and it was one of my favorite animals. I missed a chance to get it in one by trying to be too clever.
posted by eruonna at 12:55 PM on August 24, 2023
posted by eruonna at 12:55 PM on August 24, 2023
20 guesses to get something very close to humans. I'm bad at this but love it!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:59 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:59 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Got it in 7 by climbing through the evolution of vertebrates.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:00 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by leotrotsky at 1:00 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is delightful! I've played through so many practice games and am really enjoying discovering the odd branches that evolution takes and which things are closer or further apart than I would have expected.
Except for birds. Birds are terrible.
The only game I lost I just spend stuck in Neognathae with at least 10 different top-level guesses under it, only one or two where I accidentally duplicated an order I'd already guessed. I had a terrible time figuring out which birds it thought I had heard of (hummingbird, stork, kingfisher, cardinal, crane, chickadee -- none of them!) and birds in particular are very different in their taxonomy system than Wikipedia's, and it doesn't help that their FAQ link to NCBI taxonomy is broken and links to a random molecule instead. I eventually found my way to the NCBI Taxonomy Browser which was very helpful the next time I got stuck in bird-land.
Other than the cursed birds, though... I am completely addicted. Guess I'll just be guessing animals all day now.
posted by duien at 2:07 PM on August 24, 2023 [5 favorites]
Except for birds. Birds are terrible.
The only game I lost I just spend stuck in Neognathae with at least 10 different top-level guesses under it, only one or two where I accidentally duplicated an order I'd already guessed. I had a terrible time figuring out which birds it thought I had heard of (hummingbird, stork, kingfisher, cardinal, crane, chickadee -- none of them!) and birds in particular are very different in their taxonomy system than Wikipedia's, and it doesn't help that their FAQ link to NCBI taxonomy is broken and links to a random molecule instead. I eventually found my way to the NCBI Taxonomy Browser which was very helpful the next time I got stuck in bird-land.
Other than the cursed birds, though... I am completely addicted. Guess I'll just be guessing animals all day now.
posted by duien at 2:07 PM on August 24, 2023 [5 favorites]
I used to play a 20 questions variant with my kids, to guess the animal. But instead of guessing animals I tried to get them to use diagnostic features (Does it have a backbone? Does it swim? Does it eat meat? etc.) to narrow the search space.
I found myself casting around in the space of animals it knows about, trying to use the hints it was giving. It needs hooking up to some kind of expert system that knows the names of lots of animals, and where they fit in the Great Cladogram.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 2:21 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I found myself casting around in the space of animals it knows about, trying to use the hints it was giving. It needs hooking up to some kind of expert system that knows the names of lots of animals, and where they fit in the Great Cladogram.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 2:21 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I miss Chura Chura
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:26 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:26 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I did lousy on this the other day; my adult kids did better because they haven't spent a lifetime soaking in a warm bath of biological taxonomy.
Aardvark C.: some kind of expert system that knows the names of lots of animals, and where they fit in the Great Cladogram
That might be the OneZoom tree of life explorer which was on The Blue in Feb'23.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:44 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Aardvark C.: some kind of expert system that knows the names of lots of animals, and where they fit in the Great Cladogram
That might be the OneZoom tree of life explorer which was on The Blue in Feb'23.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:44 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Love it. I will be introducing it to my students, who will either love it or hate it. I definitely went in like a biologist and guessed beetle first, because most animals are beetles. Now that I see y'all talking about the biases, I will ease up on the probability assumptions in future guesses and go with the charismatic megafauna instead.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:57 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hydropsyche at 4:57 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
The full list of guessable animals is pretty easily available in the page source and there’s only about 250. It’s in a script tag towards the end of the page, and you can grab the list without revealing the puzzle answer. Having that to look through has made certain categories much less frustrating — it took me forever to figure out which snakes the game knew about.
posted by duien at 5:35 PM on August 24, 2023
posted by duien at 5:35 PM on August 24, 2023
Got it with 12 guesses remaining. Feeling chuffed.
posted by brachiopod at 7:53 PM on August 24, 2023
posted by brachiopod at 7:53 PM on August 24, 2023
Got it in six, which was mostly luck.
posted by oneirodynia at 9:12 PM on August 24, 2023
posted by oneirodynia at 9:12 PM on August 24, 2023
10 here. This is fun!
posted by brundlefly at 10:20 PM on August 24, 2023
posted by brundlefly at 10:20 PM on August 24, 2023
The more I play the more I am disappointed by the animals that are missing. They don't even let me guess Pallas's cats, least weasels, fennec foxes, snow monkeys, humuhumunukunukuapua'a (or reef triggerfish), mudskippers, or nautili. Heck, they only have 60% of extant ratite species!
This is their top FAQ but their decision is IMO competely wrong, and less fun and educational as a result. They should take the approach that wordle does, and let me guess a ton of obscure animals, but only ever make the right answers the boring old "familiar" ones.
posted by aubilenon at 1:35 AM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is their top FAQ but their decision is IMO competely wrong, and less fun and educational as a result. They should take the approach that wordle does, and let me guess a ton of obscure animals, but only ever make the right answers the boring old "familiar" ones.
posted by aubilenon at 1:35 AM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Okay after playing a bit more I realize that that would be impossible because they have no way of distinguishing 35 different kinds of antelopes, other than "uh it's one of the two that are in here". Which probably means this would be more fun if they had other axes of correctness than just straight Linnaean classification. Like how Lingule does! Then you could actually try ungulate triangulate instead of just repeatedly guessing a completely random animal in the most drilled down taxon.
posted by aubilenon at 1:51 AM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by aubilenon at 1:51 AM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is so fun. I've played lots of practice rounds now and I agree about neognathes. Thanks for sharing!
posted by Acari at 7:22 AM on August 25, 2023
posted by Acari at 7:22 AM on August 25, 2023
If anyone wants that animal list and isn't comfortable digging around in the page source, I put it on github. Why can I not stop playing this game?!
posted by duien at 10:50 AM on August 25, 2023
posted by duien at 10:50 AM on August 25, 2023
Interesting looking at that list that you have "cat" but not "dog".
posted by dannyboybell at 1:30 PM on August 25, 2023
posted by dannyboybell at 1:30 PM on August 25, 2023
They actually mention that in the FAQ! It's because the domestic cat is a distinct species, but the domestic dog is a subspecies of the wolf.
I find it to be a really interesting taxonomic fact in its own right, especially since there's so much more variations within dogs that there is within cats. A chihuahua and a Great Dane and a wolf are all the same species, but a basic tabby isn't even the same species as the European wildcat which would not look at all out of place on my couch!
This inspired me to do some Wikipedia reading, and it seems like there's actually a good bit of fairly recent debate on the classification of both cats and dogs -- some taxonomic systems recently listed the domestic cat as a subspecies of the European wildcat, and Wikipedia actually lists the domestic dog as a distinct species. But the NCBI source they're using has dogs as a subspecies and cats as distinct.
Taxonomy is just wild! It's been really interesting to me to see the differences in some of the different sources, and how and why things get rearranged.
posted by duien at 4:34 PM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I find it to be a really interesting taxonomic fact in its own right, especially since there's so much more variations within dogs that there is within cats. A chihuahua and a Great Dane and a wolf are all the same species, but a basic tabby isn't even the same species as the European wildcat which would not look at all out of place on my couch!
This inspired me to do some Wikipedia reading, and it seems like there's actually a good bit of fairly recent debate on the classification of both cats and dogs -- some taxonomic systems recently listed the domestic cat as a subspecies of the European wildcat, and Wikipedia actually lists the domestic dog as a distinct species. But the NCBI source they're using has dogs as a subspecies and cats as distinct.
Taxonomy is just wild! It's been really interesting to me to see the differences in some of the different sources, and how and why things get rearranged.
posted by duien at 4:34 PM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Once again my inability to differentiate the words "nutria" and "nutella" hampers success.Mental note: Do not put Abehammerb Lincoln in charge of making sandwiches.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 5:40 PM on August 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
"How many horrible birds could there possibly be," she asks.
posted by phunniemee at 4:57 AM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by phunniemee at 4:57 AM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
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