第2987期:Massive Natural World Database

This is a slime mold. Cat Chang is an urban designer. But in her spare time, she likes to examine other life-forms.

这是一种黏菌。凯特·张是一名城市设计师。但在业余时间，她喜欢研究其他生命。

Ever since I was a little girl, I've been interested in the natural world. We're native Hawaiian. Our family and my grandmother would take me around her yard.

从我还是个小女孩起，我就对自然界感兴趣。我们是夏威夷原住民。我的家人和祖母会带我在她的院子里转转。

She would show us all the plants and how you use them. And later when I was interested in learning about fungi, I didn't have anybody to help me with it.

她会向我们展示所有的植物以及如何使用它们。后来当我对学习真菌感兴趣时，却没有人能在这方面帮助我。

Someone suggested iNaturalist to me, and it's on your cell phone.

有人向我推荐了iNaturist， 在手机上就可以使用。

iNaturalist is a joint initiative of National Geographic and the California Academy of Sciences.

iNaturist是国家地理和加州科学院联合发起的应用。

Essentially, people can take a photo of anything living, plants, animal, fungus, slime mold, put it on the website and other people identify it.

从本质上讲，人们可以给任何生物拍照，比如植物、动物、真菌、黏菌，然后把照片上传到网站上，由其他人来识别它们。

The app compares the image with those already in the database to begin the identification process. But ultimately, human experts weigh in.

该应用程序将图像与数据库中已有的图像进行比对，以启动识别过程。但最终，还需要人类专家进行评估。

The best part of it is there's a community of people that can also participate.

最棒的部分就是有一个我们可以参与进来的社区。

It's used by scientists to collect data, and actually write papers, as well as just amateur people who are really interested in getting more involved and caring more about nature.

科学家们用它来收集数据，甚至撰写论文，同样适用于那些真正热衷于更深入参与、更加关心自然的业余爱好者。

This time of year, I'm particularly looking for salamanders. Oh, there he is poking out of the wood although.

每年这个时候，我特别喜欢找蝾螈。它正从木头里探出头来呢。

And I always like to see mammals, they're one of my favorites, and birds of course. I have almost 55,000 observations. It's a lot.

我总是喜欢观察哺乳动物，它们是我的最爱之一，当然还有鸟类。我已经记录了近55000条观察记录。这数量相当多。

iNaturalist has observations from every country in the world. Right now, I believe we have over 26 million observations and about 700,000 active users.

iNaturalist拥有来自世界各国的观察记录。目前，我相信我们已经收集了超过2600万条观察记录，拥有约70万活跃用户。

This collaboration across continents led recently to a surprising discovery in California.

这种跨大洲的合作最近在加利福尼亚州有了一个惊人的发现。

The type of giant sunfish whose normal habitat is thousands of miles to the south, an indication perhaps of a rapidly changing world. 

这种巨型太阳鱼的正常栖息地在数千英里以南，这或许表明世界正在迅速变化。