Cloned Encounters in IoT

I have the same clone issues in IoT. Happy to provide examples as well if that helps

Hi @noaahawaii

I’ve moved this to its own thread since the original issue in SeadragonSearch was resolved a few years ago.

Can you give us a little more info about what you’re seeing and share any examples you have?

Thank you for your quick response!
I notice it when I create annotations right after I upload images. (I do this because it takes a while to create annotations)

Here are some examples:
My upload - Internet of Turtles
Clone - Internet of Turtles

My upload (with my annotations) - Internet of Turtles
Clone - Internet of Turtles
Clone - Internet of Turtles
Clone - Internet of Turtles
Clone - Internet of Turtles

My upload - Internet of Turtles
Clone - Internet of Turtles
Clone - Internet of Turtles

@Anastasia
For this one it created a clone without me creating an annotations

Thank you for the examples! It looks like this is normal behavior based on the number of annotations that appear in each photo. Two annotations in one image generally means that two animals are present and at least two Encounters (one animal at a location and date) must exist.

It sounds like you’re manually annotating your encounters before they’ve finished going through Detection and Identification because it’s faster for you. This is likely resulting in extra head annotations (the ones you create and the ones that are automatically added) which is adding extra cloned Encounters.

More info on cloned encounters and annotations are in our docs.

Since the examples you’ve given are instances where the cloned Encounters are all of the same animal, you can go ahead and delete them to make it easier to track your data.

Thank you for your reply!
I will go back and delete the clones.

But I’m confused about the clones being created when there are “two animals present” when there is only one individual. Left and right side profile as in this example:

Essentially any time there is more than one annotation in an image, Wildbook assumes each annotation equals one animal. When you have two annotations on an image (head with a viewpoint and head without a viewpoint, for example) you’ll see a cloned Encounter for each additional annotation beyond the first one of the image. It’s assuming that if two head annotations are present, it’s because there are two animals pictured, and not a single two-headed animal. :sweat_smile: