Does anyone have/know of a really good online dichotomous key for identifying pretty much anything?
It seems like a lot of "What is this?" posts could be easily solved by just having a nice dichotomous key for everyone to use online. I've tried looking for one by haven't been able to find one. I've been thinking about getting into microscopy, and so I want a dichotomous key to look up anything I find, but I think if we could have one large dichotomous key for every known living thing it would be incredibly useful, no?
>>2448756
I don't think there would be dichotomous keys that start all the way back to lizard, bird, pig, or cow.
I think if you want it to include every living thing it would be far to large to be practical. especially if you would go into subspecies, that have only small differences between them.
>>2448825
But if it weren't a physical paper dichotomous key and instead an internet database, it wouldn't be constrained by size. And I don't suppose going into subspecies is required, just enough where people are able to identify what ever they happen across?
How hard could it be to assemble something like this? Has one already been made?
>>2448830
I haven't seen any but there are sites and forums dedicated to just 'wut is this'.
I also recall some sites - none of which I remember- that had more of a checklist. One was for birds and the other for turtles, I think. You could check your location, it's color, size, markings, etc and it's generate the animals matching that. Something like sounds much more applicable. There's probably even apps for that. It sounds a lot better than keys.