DuoNat
A visual taxon identification game
Watch Earth's biodiversity grow in your mind.
DuoNat pairs up real photographs from iNaturalist and asks you to match each image to the right taxon. No dry field guides, no technical nomenclature — experience Earth's amazing biodiversity wherever you are.
How it works
Pick a place or a group of living things you're curious about — birds in your backyard, wildflowers, mushrooms, insects, whatever pulls you in. DuoNat shows you two real photos and two names, and asks you to match them up.
That's where the fun starts: playing detective. Two animals or plants that look almost identical at a glance — what actually sets them apart? A patch of color, the shape of a leaf, the way a wing folds. You start noticing the clues that real naturalists use, and once you've spotted one, you don't forget it.
Miss a pair and it comes back around soon, until it sticks. Get it right and DuoNat nudges you toward something a bit harder, or a bit more visually similar, next time — so the difficulty keeps pace with you. Every photo comes from the iNaturalist community, so you're always looking at the real, wild, endlessly varied outdoors.
Who it's for
Curious naturalists
Sharpen the eye you already use on hikes and in the backyard — the two-warbler, three-aster kind of doubt.
Students & self-learners
Turn a taxonomy unit or a personal deep-dive into a group of taxa into short, repeatable practice.
Kids exploring nature
Simplified, image-first pairs make first encounters with "wait, those are different animals?" fun rather than technical.
Working naturalists
Amateur taxonomists and field-adjacent professionals keep an eye sharp on the specific look-alikes that trip up IDs.
Built on real observations
Every photo and range in DuoNat traces back to an actual observation on iNaturalist — see exactly which taxon you're looking at, and where it's been seen. Curious how much of the tree of life is covered so far? The stats page breaks it down clade by clade.