r/species

I couldnt get a picture because it was underwater, but I made this awesome drawing, which is basically the same thing.

Was scalloping in homosassa (gulf of mexico off florida, USA) and saw these things in the sea grass everywhere. Off white tube coming out of the ground with 4 light blue strings coming out of them

I thought it was litter the first time I saw it, like someone just dropped a bunch of string, but after I saw them for the 10th and 20th time, I was curious if it was a trap or something

Eventually realized that the strings are consistently spread out in all directions, despite the sea grass around it being pushed to one by the tide. Looking at the strands closer, I saw that they kind of move around independently of the tide, so I figure its an animal of some kind

Its always like 3-6 strands. No more, no less.

Link: https://playanimalis.com/

Uses AI to identify the animal species, then generates the assets on the fly, e.g. images, moves, stats etc.

It uses the real world as the game map, health centres are places of worship, shops are grocery stores, every public park has a gym where you compete with other players.

You can level up species and grow them to the next stage, e.g. caterpillar > chrysalis > butterfly.

The further you go from urban areas, the higher level the animals are. Stronger, but harder to catch.

You can battle / trade with your friends and you get more leaves (in-game currency) for capturing endangered species (don't disturb them).

The game started with no assets, the whole map is programmatically generated, all the animal data is generated on the fly and cached to the database for future encounters.

Other cool stuff:

• it uses the real animal's animal call in the game
• weather in the game is your current real-world weather
• houses are styled accurate to the local building style
• shadows / night-time are based on the real world time of day & year (location of the sun)

The aim is to get people out in nature and appreciating wild animals.

Edit: Here is the app link, on iOS & Android, available now: https://playanimalis.com/

I found this in Northern Montana along with these vertebrae which I think is from a snake? I tried to id it myself but came up with nothing.