Learn the birds, mammals, plants, insects, herps, fish and mollusks around you by name, through short photo lessons built from real iNaturalist sightings. Free, with no ads and no account.
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Every day, everyone gets the same five species, easy to hard, in a U.S. and a World edition. You have 15 seconds per photo, and faster right answers score more, up to 100 each. The squares in a shared result show how each round went: green for 70 points or more, yellow for 40 or more, orange for any points, and red for a miss. Get KnowKi on the App Store to play today's.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist and writer, proposed ki (pronounced like “key”) as a word for a living being of the Earth: a bird, a tree, a snail. It asks us to see ki as someone, not something. KnowKi helps you get to know the kin (the plural of ki) around you by name, until you can recognize them in the wild with no key.
Your guide is Ki, a kea: the alpine parrot of Aotearoa New Zealand, famously curious, clever and a little cheeky.
“In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught.” (Baba Dioum, 1968). Every species you learn to recognize is one more neighbor you'll notice, care about and speak up for.
Missed species come back in your next session, and species you get right come back after 1, 3 and 7 days. A species becomes kin once you recognize it in two different photos on two different days.
Once you have 10 kin, KnowKi suggests which of them are out and about near you this month, so you can go find them. When you do, photograph ki and post it to iNaturalist: once others confirm it, your sighting helps scientists, and it could become a photo in KnowKi. Connect your iNaturalist username in Settings to collect a stamp in your Fieldbook for each species you've found.
In a lesson, tap Try a different photo before you answer to see another photo of the same species. The choices stay the same, so it doesn't give the answer away. In the Daily, Different photo swaps once per round for a small point penalty. If a photo seems wrong or inappropriate, email us (below) and we'll remove it.
Some places have few recorded observations for some groups, especially fish, herps and mollusks. Try a larger radius, another group, or a nearby town.
KnowKi needs an internet connection to prepare lessons. Check your connection and try again. Your progress is saved on your phone and is never lost when a lesson fails to load.
It is on by default and limits lessons to species iNaturalist records as native where each photo was taken. Turn it off to practice introduced species instead. Introduced doesn't always mean invasive.
Open Settings → Sounds. Choose a quiet background soundscape (forest birds, a creek or a summer meadow; off by default) and the style of answer sounds, or turn them off. Sounds follow your phone's silent switch.
KnowKi only reads your public observations to see which of your Fieldbook species you've found. It never posts anything or signs in for you. Disconnect any time in Settings.
Open Settings and tap Delete local progress. Deleting the app also removes everything it stored. There is no account to close.
Yes: see field guides for every state. The book links there go to Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores; KnowKi earns a commission on purchases through them. The app itself has no store or affiliate links.
KnowKi is free, with no ads. If you'd like to help cover the lesson servers, you can buy me a coffee. It's entirely optional and doesn't unlock anything. The iOS app has no donation or payment links.
Questions, bugs or photo concerns: garrettgcraig@gmail.com. Please include your iPhone model and what you were doing when the problem happened.
KnowKi is a free, noncommercial project. It is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by iNaturalist, Wikipedia or Robin Wall Kimmerer.