Thanks for the game! It is a very entertaining and is highly educational, probably thanks to the pictures ... And a good way to show us fascinating species (like the purple frog) that we would otherwise not bother to look up. Except for the most abundant species available in Europe, it seems quite unlikely that people would be willing to give these species "common names" in English. This does not decrease the value of the game at all, but it is perhaps a tad misleading what the objective is: are we to guess a) whether a particular specie is named as a "frog" or "toad" in its common name (folk taxonomy) or b) where they belong in taxonomy (is it a Bufonidae or not)? If we go for a), that is perhaps not as exciting to show species endemic to places without tons of native English speakers (like Thailand etc.). But this does not decrease from the value of the game at all. I think it shows a very efficient approach to gamify and teach taxonomy to people.

Would it be of any use to show a success rate indicator perhaps or a feedback whether the guess was correct or not?

Thanks so much for the kind words and thoughtful comment.

Regarding the objective, it's targeting the most common understanding of "frog" and "toad", which for most people will be folk taxonomy, and they probably aren't aware that there's not a scientific taxonomic distinction. So from your list, I think most people will approach it as option "a". However you might be happy to know that when selecting species, there's a couple that are in there because they belong to taxa that contain both "frogs" and "toads", so "b" would be quite difficult!

In that it goes for "a", it's really intended to show that folk taxonomy, like most ways people categorise things, works until it doesn't. Really important to me to note that it's not trying to favour "scientific" taxonomy over folk, though. There's evidence that practicing folk taxonomy, by observing and categorising what you see in nature around you, helps build connectedness with nature, which has a lot of benefits, and making people aware of folk taxonomy as a thing that they contribute to is the ultimate objective.

Oh and regarding the score: I chose not to track or display a score because it didn't feel in the spirit of the game, and besides that, there's no fair way to score it. It can't be based on their common name, as shown in the game itself, for example. You could argue that the only way to win is to always press frog, since all toads are frogs by scientific taxonomy, but I don't want to say folk taxonomy is invalid. But really, I don't think the score matters to the learning objective.

Which is why the game doesn't track it, there is in fact not even two buttons.

I see, thanks for the answer!

Very fascinating. This is common in bird taxonomy as well, for example, with doves/pigeons, or egrets/herons

I wish there was a blurb on what makes a frog vs toad so we can be educated on how to distinguish vs just blind guessing.

Or if there isn't any, say so and maybe some history on why.

There's an explanation at the end of the game!

I think I went through a few of them and it became clear I didn't know the difference at all and didn't feel I'd get an explanation of why so stopped there.

It would have been better for each result to talk about why it was classified as a toad or frog.

There is no explanation to why, it’s all cultural and historical. There’s no distinction in conventional taxonomy

TIL

But I wouldn't have playing the game because I stopped midway.

Maybe have a progress count like out of 10 or 5 if your intent is to show people that.

This is a good thing you made, and you should feel good about it

This was really lovely to say, thank you!

I would like something that tells me how to tell the difference between the two based on the images.

One of the things the game is trying to communicate is that this isn’t possible :)

Very disappointed by the absence of score in the end, I feel my effort was stolen.

I don't bother about real taxonomy

I've got terrible news for you: inspect the source in browser.

What's in there? I'm afraid to be fooled again - I will inspect and find nothing

The game doesn’t track score, to the extent that frog and toad are not even separate buttons

cruel prank