Stuarts' eGuide Mammals 4th Ed app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: mydigitalearth.com
First release : 13 Sep 2012
App size: 863.45 Mb
Enrich your wildlife viewing experience in southern Africa with this user-friendly app by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.
PLEASE NOTE: a newer version of this app is available as Stuarts SA Mammals 5th Ed. The 5th edition expands coverage to include Angola, Zambia, Malawi and northern Mozambique and contains revised and updated information, new photographs, videos and calls, and the ability to search and sort by French and German names (in addition to English and scientific names).
You can purchase Stuarts SA Mammals 5th edition at a discounted price for a limited period of time. Please search for it in the app store, or in the "Other apps by this developer" section.
APP FEATURES:
• Covers all 350 species found in the region
• Multiple hi-res photographs, distribution maps, animal–human size comparison, spoor drawings and skull photographs
• Animal calls and videos
• Quickly find a species by looking up its track type or scat
• View two species side-by-side on the same screen
• Easily swipe between species
• Search and sort by English or scientific names and in taxonomic or alphabetic order
• A personal record of mammal sightings that can be exported using email
NOTE: Uninstalling/reinstalling the program will result in the loss of your list; it is recommended that you export the list regularly to avoid any loss of data.
We invite all users to share their comments and ideas on our forum at www.mydigitalearth.com
Latest reviews of Stuarts' eGuide Mammals 4th Ed app for iPhone and iPad
A big improvement from the previous version, which had been nearly abandoned. Pros: o A fine program to give you an overview of South African animals. Lots of data, lots of maps, lots of pictures. Many have movies or sounds. o Easy to use, works well, doesnt crash. Negatives: o Theres no real search engine for doing reverse lookups. You can look up a picture of a Pipistrelle, but if you dont know what your animal is in the first place, it wont help you figure it out. Im not a biologist and have never heard of these things (they look like a kind of bat). o If theres no sounds for this animal, the screen still has the player taking up a lot of real estate, with No Sounds Available in bold across it. Thats silly. o A lot of the animals still dont have sound recording... they have three kinds of zebras listed here, but none have recordings. Huh? Go to any zoo and you can hear the zebras from a mile away. Its not hard to find a recording. o A lot of the photos are of ANIMAL CARCASSES! Huh? Who wants to see a picture of a dead mole? Go to the "Arends Golden Mole" page, and the photo shows 14 dead moles, with an arrow pointing to one of them. There are a ton of the photos that are like this, and they are stupid and useless. Want to know what a Natal Red Rock Rabbit looks like? Good luck! This will show you a stretched out carcass on a road, some poop, and a sketch of its footprint. (The text goes on to say that the distribution map here is important, which I guess it is, but still -- is it not possible to get a decent picture at all?) o The best photo they can find of a lion is of male humping a female in the middle of a road? (And its backlit so you cant see anything either.) Seriously, come on. The photos have been improved with the recent update but there are still a lot of awful ones. o Some of the photos show only the head (e.g., Ruppells Pipistrelle). I can tell it has big teeth and big ears -- what else? o Some sloppy programming. Go to the Tracks pages, and all of the titles say Title up top. Be aware that with this update, the app size has grown from something like 100 MB, to 900 MB. Thats because a lot of video was added. I think thats good, but it would be nice to make that an optional download. The Sasol eBirds Guide to South African Birds app is based on the same engine, from the same company. This app isnt as good as that one (eBirds is more complete and consistent, with better figures), but the gap has been closed a bit.
Great images, valuable info for tracking animals, including their tracks and poop. Nice audio and video, would like more. I use this all the time.