By creating a Mammaling account you accept these terms. They are written in plain language on purpose: if you do not understand something, that is our failing, not yours. Write to us and we will make it clearer.
Mammaling is a free app for recording observations of wild mammals. It works both as a personal field diary and as a source of open scientific data. It is provided by Ángel Dolón Viejo, Capel Place, Midleton, Co. Cork, P25 X535, Ireland.
The quality of the record is the only thing that makes this app worth anything. Record only real observations, at the place and on the date they happened. If you are unsure of the species, it is better to stop at the level you do know than to risk a name.
Mammaling records animals in the wild. Zoo animals, farm animals, pets and captive animals are not part of the scientific dataset. If you record one, mark it as such.
Do not harass, bait or disturb an animal to get a photograph or a sighting. Do not enter restricted areas or private land without permission. No observation is worth an animal's stress or a conflict with anyone.
No harassment, insults, discrimination, spam, or sexual or violent content. Comments and messages exist to help identify and to share, not to argue.
Your photographs are yours. Full stop. Uploading them to Mammaling does not make us the owner of anything.
By uploading a photograph you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and transferable licence to:
This licence lasts while the photograph is published. If you delete it, we stop using it, except for copies already distributed or held in backups, which are removed on the usual technical timescales.
Every photograph on Mammaling is published under the same licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC). There is nothing to choose.
| What it allows | What it does not allow |
|---|---|
| Anyone reusing your photograph with credit to you: in school work, outreach, free field guides, conservation articles or educational material. | Anyone using it to sell or to make money without your express permission. Not stock libraries, not advertising, not commercial books. |
We do it this way for two reasons. The first is that an archive with a single licence genuinely serves science and outreach: anyone who needs a photograph of a mammal knows instantly what they may do with it. The second is that it protects you from the use photographers mind most — someone else profiting from their work — without blocking the uses that give the project its point.
If you would rather not publish a photograph on these terms, simply do not upload it. The observation is recorded all the same and counts exactly as much for science and for your life list: photographs are a bonus, never a requirement.
The licence applies from the moment you upload the photograph and is irrevocable for uses third parties have already legitimately made. If you delete the photograph, it stops being available for new uses.
For every image you upload, Mammaling keeps two copies: the one shown in the app — optimised and stripped of metadata — and an archive copy at full quality, as it came out of your camera.
That archive copy is kept for archival, outreach and scientific use: it means a photograph taken today can illustrate a paper, a printed guide or a conservation campaign years from now. Downsizing an image is irreversible, and by the time the occasion arises the original usually no longer exists anywhere.
The archive copy may include the camera's original metadata, including the location. That is why it is never published and never shared with anyone: it is accessible only to the project's controller. Its use is subject to the same CC BY-NC licence and to your authorship, exactly like the public copy.
If you delete a photograph, both copies are deleted.
Observation data — which species, where, when, how many — is not the same thing as photographs. To be of use to science it has to be able to circulate freely.
So when you publish an observation you release it under an open data licence (CC0 or equivalent), which lets any researcher or institution use it with attribution to the source. This data may be incorporated into GBIF and other biodiversity repositories.
That release is irrevocable. Once a record enters a scientific dataset and other work has used it, withdrawing it would break those analyses. This is standard practice in biodiversity repositories, and it is what makes projects like this worth doing.
The location precision that gets shared is always the one you chose: exact, obscured to roughly 20 km, or nothing at all if the checklist is private.
Moderators may flag improbable observations, ask you for more information, withdraw records that do not stand up from the scientific dataset, and delete photographs or comments that breach these terms. Whenever something of yours is removed you will receive a notice explaining why.
We may suspend or close accounts that repeatedly record false data, harass other users, or attempt to damage the service.
Mammaling is free and carries no advertising. Recording observations, reading the species accounts and the articles, and using the maps are free and ad-free, and will stay that way.
It is funded by voluntary subscriptions: people who want to support the project get conveniences — more assisted identifications per month, no per-species photo cap, the ability to start conversations — and help pay for the servers and the expeditions. Nothing that carries scientific value sits behind a paywall.
Payment is processed by Stripe on its own pages: your card details do not pass through Mammaling. You can cancel whenever you like; your account reverts to free and you keep everything you have recorded. The details are in the privacy policy.
The app can help you identify a photograph. If you press that button — and only then — the image, reduced and stripped of metadata, is sent to a Google artificial-intelligence service along with the country and the month, never the exact coordinates. Section 7 of the privacy policy explains it in full.
A suggestion is not an identification. The species that ends up recorded is the one you choose, and you are responsible for what you record: this data reaches scientific repositories, and an identification accepted without checking is an error nobody catches later. You can use the whole app without touching this feature.
Mammaling is provided as is, with no guarantee of being always available or free of errors. We do keep backups, but we recommend you do not rely on the app as your only record of irreplaceable data.
We are not liable for indirect damages arising from use of the app, nor for what happens on your outings. Your safety in the field and compliance with local law are your own responsibility.
Nothing written here limits the rights granted to you by the consumer legislation applicable in your country.
We may update these terms. If a change is material we will tell you in the app with reasonable notice. Continuing to use Mammaling afterwards means accepting them.
These terms are governed by Irish law. If you are a consumer, you keep the right to bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence.
Ángel Dolón Viejo
Capel Place, Midleton, Co. Cork, P25 X535, Ireland
[email protected]