As the app market expands more and more Animal Track apps are coming out. The real question is are they any good and what should they contain for content that is useful. If you were to purchase one, what would you expect to get in return for your hard earned dollar. Lets start with the number of mammals to feature. The average person roaming the woods today is more interested in larger mammals, after all those are the tracks that are most noticeable when your hiking. A rough calculation of the larger mammals of North America bigger than a Weasel would be around 45 to 50 different species and family members.  These would be the most common animals to be seen or leave sign for which anyone would be interested in identifying.  Your outdoors for a reason, your either hiking, camping, hunting or fishing, heck you may even be on a golf coarse.  The point is when you finally find a track you are curious about identifying do you want to identify it and get on with your activity or do you want to spend extra time on your smart phone wading through numerous animals that the average person will rarely find a track of.  It’s sad that everyone is on the go and it’s a hurry up let’s get where were going society but that’s the reality of it and that’s one thing a track app should do, quickly identify what you found.  Apps loaded with Polar Bears are nice but how many of you will be looking for Muskox tracks in the arctic region? Would you really take the time to differentiate between a Meadow Mouse and a Deer Mouse or would you just be content to know it’s a mouse track.  An app that contains around 50 to 60 animals for all of North America is more than sufficient.

A good app should have a search feature broken into categories and then search again by track size leaving you with 2 or 3 results to further pick from rather than 7 or more.   The main thing especially for kids is for the app to hold your attention long enough to identify an animal. If there is to much time involved in searching then it becomes a job and we want this to be quick, fun and educational after all were outdoors for a reason and it’s not to spend additional time on our phone.

The bulk of any track app should also contain digital images of tracks and the animal itself and lets not forget sound files of the vocalization of each animal.  All these features should be self contained in the app, relying on a wireless connection to access these features leaves the app useless when the majority of outdoor adventures take place where there is a lack of wireless service. If you are thinking of getting a Animal Track app then make sure that it does not rely on cell service to use.  If it doesn’t have built in digital images of what a track looks like in the wild then what good is it?

Once your app ID’s an animal it should give you some basic information on habitat and life cycle, two paragraphs maximum. Remember were outdoors having fun, you can save all the heavy reading on the animal for later when your home if you want to learn more.

Throw in a ruler feature and you have a pretty concise app, one that is accurate, searches quickly and has the right amount of content all contained in one nice neat self stored package. Keep all these in mind when you decide to take the plunge into an Animal Track app and you’ll have a more rewarding and I hope educational experience on your next outing.

So all that said what’s new from us here at MyNature. Well, we have been working on an update for the past three months to our own track app. Once the new version is released (which will still be a while) we’ll have a searchable database for the addition of scat to the app. We’ll also have additional digital images of tracks, animal gaits and sign left by each animal. We redesigned the journal page to make it more functional and are also adding some social networking features for Twitter and Facebook.  There will also be the addition of the all to popular life list to keep track of your discoveries.  Were also going to have a web based site to post your identifications to as well as  images.  With your participation we should have a very complete database to refer to for animal sign, scat and tracks of North America. Some of the new features will need a wireless service to utilize but the app and all images will still be self contained as they are now.   Don’t worry you’ll hear when the update is done we won’t forget to tell you!!

Happy Tracking!