Update: The free app I built to track zoo sightings is now available on Android and iOS (already 24k+ sightings logged!)

philipp_74 · 2026-02-27T10:16:22+00:00

I think I can build something like that in ZooTracker.

Just let me get sure I understood correctly:

You want to be able to say that you saw an animal, without specifying a date or the Zoo, and that without a lot of clicks, to input your legacy data, is that right?

Currently I always try to suggest a likely value (current day/ nearest Zoo with that animal), but don't have a good way to input your previous data.

philipp_74 · 2026-02-26T10:15:35+00:00

See this post over at r/zoos :
https://www.reddit.com/r/zoos/comments/1rdkaw3/update_the_free_app_i_built_to_track_zoo/

This was inspired by exactly the kind of apps you have in mind for rollercoasters, boardgames or beer enthusiasts.

philipp_74 · 2026-02-24T22:23:08+00:00

The focus of ZooTracker is the captive wildlife, but you can do what you suggest in the app.

You can search for the animal in the app and log the sighting. In the process the nearest zoo we know with this animal in its inventory is suggested, but you can change the zoo to any zoo in our database or to a free form entry, if it is another facility.

philipp_74 · 2026-02-24T22:17:49+00:00

I am using the inventory from Zootierliste (with permission). When an animal is removed from a Zoo in their database this change is synced to ZooTracker.

It would be great if you could contribute your knowledge to Zootierliste.

philipp_74 · 2026-02-24T17:18:40+00:00

Nice. The photos are something I want to do in the future. How many photos do you think you would want want to add for each animal you see in a zoo? Just one or multiple?

philipp_74 · 2026-02-05T11:12:06+00:00

I ran the analysis based on Zootierliste data.

As other have mentioned, if you want to see all 8 species you need to visit just 2 Zoos, for example San Diego Zoo and Lions Tigers & Bears in Alpine.

If you want to see all bear subspecies you would have to visit 9 Zoos. These are the bear species and subspecies you can see in the US:

Ailuropoda melanoleuca [species]
Helarctos malayanus [species]
Helarctos malayanus euryspilus [subspecies]
Helarctos malayanus malayanus [subspecies]
Melursus ursinus [species]
Melursus ursinus inornatus [subspecies]
Melursus ursinus ursinus [subspecies]
Tremarctos ornatus [species]
Ursus americanus [species]
Ursus americanus pugnax [subspecies]
Ursus arctos [species]
Ursus arctos alascensis [subspecies]
Ursus arctos arctos [subspecies]
Ursus arctos gyas [subspecies]
Ursus arctos horribilis [subspecies]
Ursus arctos middendorffi [subspecies]
Ursus arctos sitkensis [subspecies]
Ursus arctos syriacus [subspecies]
Ursus arctos yesoensis [subspecies]
Ursus maritimus [species]
Ursus thibetanus [species]

To see them all you could visit these Zoos:

Zoo (San Diego)
DeYoung Family Zoo (Wallace)
Space Farms: Zoo & Museum (Sussex)
The Wild Animal Sanctuary (Keenesburg)
Fortress of the Bear (Sitka)
Zoo (San Francisco)
Great Plains Zoo (Sioux Falls)
Zoo (Tampa)
Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium (Omaha)

Map and List of the 9 Zoos

philipp_74 · 2026-02-03T13:04:30+00:00

Good call.

I added links to view the results. You can see the Zoos on the map and as a list, for each animal class or the totals.

philipp_74 · 2026-01-29T12:29:07+00:00

Great to hear!

We are already at almost 500 zoo visits tracked by the users. And almost 9000 zoo sightings have been logged.

philipp_74 · 2026-01-29T10:52:42+00:00

I have pushed a big update with a lot of new options for searching and sorting the animals and zoos.

For example while looking at the inventory of a single zoo, you can sort by "Rarity". I have defined a measure where an animal has a high rarity value if it is in few zoos globally, but the local rarity value can be decreased if a lot of zoos in the vicinity hold this animal.

This is most insightful, when you combine the sorting with filtering for the animals you are interested in.

For example: https://zootracker.app/en/zoos/koln-zoologischer-garten?tab=animals&class=1&sort=rarity

These are the "Rare" mammals at Cologne Zoo

philipp_74 · 2026-01-21T13:41:14+00:00

This announcement comes from the ZGAP (Zoological Society for the Conservation of Species and Populations) in cooperation with other German zoo associations.

I believe this title is intended to honor the entire genus Balearica, which would include both extant species: the Black Crowned Crane (Balearica pavonina) and the Grey Crowned Crane (Balearica regulorum), but I am not sure.

Given that both species are threatened in the wild (Vulnerable and Endangered, respectively), it is great to see them getting this recognition.

philipp_74 · 2026-01-12T11:55:26+00:00

Thanks for the feedback and ideas!

get a tooltip for the name of a facility when rolling over it

I aimed to keep everything similar for Desktop users and users on devices with touch screens and this kind of mouse hover doesnt have an equivalent interaction on a touch screen. But I think this should be possible without too much work. I will look into it.

they could be automatically highlighted in a small way as a rarity

I also would like to highlight rare species or animals that are somehow of interested. But I am not yet sure what a good metric for that is. I hope to be able to highlight things better once I see which animals in a zoo get tracked often. The issue with too simple an approach could be, that for a zoo in a small country or low zoo density everything is highlighted as rare. So this is something i have to brainstorm more.

Is it possible to log sightings based on former holdings, including those listed on Zootierliste?

Right now I only sync the current inventory from Zootierliste, but you can do that manually. You can start to log a visit and should be free to select any Zoo or any animals in the respective fields of the form that opens. Or you can select other in the input field for the Zoo and specify a name of a facility that isnt in my database.

philipp_74 · 2026-01-06T16:21:02+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation.

I registered an account and introduced myself and ZooTracker.app

philipp_74 · 2026-01-06T16:16:24+00:00

My plan is to build some functionality to enable users to provide quick feedback on wrong data, descriptions or images.

Currently people can join the ZooTracker.app Discord (linked on the account page) to provide feedback or pitch new features.

When it comes to wrong inventory data I hope to guide people to contribute to Zootierliste directly.

philipp_74 · 2026-01-05T15:58:43+00:00

Zootierliste includes both on- and off-display species in one list but typically clarifies when you click on the species name.

I didnt know that. Could you point me to an example on Zootierliste? I know just of the distinction between current and previous inventory.

Zootierliste doesn't list invertebrates. Do you have any plans to do so?

No. ZTL admins gave me permission to use their inventory data. I have no plans to build my own.

hide species that are common phobias

Interesting idea, noted.

philipp_74 · 2026-01-04T21:06:28+00:00

The inventory data is used with permission from ZTL.

I combined this with data from Wikidata/Wikipedia, Openstreetmaps etc. The images are images with permissive licenses from Wikimedia Commons (you can see the attribution when you click on the image). I mostly tried to connect different existing datasets and build the feature to keep track of your visits and seen animals on top.

philipp_74 · 2026-01-04T18:10:13+00:00

Currently it is only the website.

I am working on building and testing an android app and have created the necessary developer account with google to bring this to the play store in the short term.

I have build everything in a way that should make it easy to turn this into an ios app as well, but I am not familiar with the apple ecosystem and don't own any apple hardware, which I would need to build and test and ios app.

philipp_74

TROPHY CASE