The app works in a similar way to Shazam, which ingeniously tells you which song is playing by listening and matching it. The Critterpedia app, a collaboration between the CSIRO and Data61, uses a photo you upload to match with hundreds of thousands of images from their database. Their artificially intelligent (AI) algorithm can then identify the spider or snake down to the family, genus or species.

“The AI platform considers not only these images, but also additional information, like GPS location,” the CSIRO wrote on its blog.

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Dr Matt Adcock, a researcher from Data61, who led the Critterpedia project, said the differences between species can be “quite subtle”.

“To teach the platform, hundreds of thousands of images of snakes and spiders were fed into the system. It was a sizeable task uniquely perfect for an AI solution,” he said.

“We need a great deal of training data to adequately identify critters.”

The developers hope the app will educate people and potentially save lives.