It Looked Like a New Species. The Trouble Was, It Didn't Exist

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It Looked Like a New Species. The Trouble Was, It Didn’t Exist

Article by Eric Boodman: “The bug looked like a new species. It had the classic mark of the dead-leaf mantises — a flattened shield, brown and crinkled to mimic forest-floor detritus — but the camouflage was almost too good, as if it were wearing an actual leaf. It was unlike any specimen Kris Anderson had ever seen.

Mr. Anderson has seen plenty of specimens. He has thousands pinned in drawers in his Las Vegas home, legs out, wings spread to reveal a stained-glass geometry of veins.

Every evening after his workday as a director of a counseling center, he spends two and a half hours poring over the 500 or 600 mantis pictures that enthusiasts have uploaded to the citizen science website iNaturalist, where anyone can submit photos of wildlife to help map biodiversity. To Mr. Anderson, most are junk — blurry shots of common species. But every so often there is something worth writing up: a mantis never before documented on Aruba, or a rare behavior, like three females seemingly eating each other.

For a few seconds, the mantis he saw on June 17 seemed like a taxonomic jackpot. Then he realized he’d been duped. This mantis was fake, a product of artificial intelligence…(More)”.

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