About

A bumblebee bssssing a flower to get nectar

What is "Sam's Bugs"?

"Sam's Bugs" is a small personal project. I grew up on the internet of the early 2000s. If you were searching for information on any animal you had seen in the wild back then and your search engine was doing a good job, you would stumble upon personal websites of people either researching that one animal for a living or collecting information on all sorts of animals in big databases, accompanied by, sometimes pretty poor, photos. Those were some of the best websites to discover interesting things you had never heard of. I always wanted one of those databases for myself, just a place where I can log every animal I have ever seen.

This is it. This is my little database. All the pictures were taken by me and once there are actual entries about the species, these texts will also be written by me. I created this database and keep it running, stocking it with ever new entries whenever I spot something alive.

"Sam's Bugs" was born on October 2nd 2025 and has been growing daily since.

100% Human Made

This wiki, all the photos and text on it and everything surrounding this website are made by me, a human. There is no "AI" here. Not in the pictures, not in the code. We, the people who care about observing life, will eventually run into trouble with people uploading generated (or heavily AI edited) images to catalogues and databases such as iNaturalist. My content will never contribute to this. Your AI picture is being generated by an LLM trained on the work of tens of thousands of photographers who spent their time, money and skill on taking photos. They travel around the world and wait it out for weeks to take a picture that will eventually end up in a collection of great photos online. Generative AI cannot create a "new image", it can only copy what it has "seen" in real photos. You can do better. Pick up a cheap camera and get out there, photographing real animals (or plants, or fungi or other forms of life). I promise, you will be actually proud if you get a good shot.

More questions, more answers

Can I contribute?

Are you me? Then no, only I can contribute to this wiki. I may or may not add a mailadress later to which you can send corrections to entries I have made.

Am I allowed to use these photos?

All photos on this wiki are under the CC BY-NC-ND license. That means you may use them in non-commercial projects as long as you distribute them under the same license without modifying them in any way. You must also name the photographer, that is me. You find all of the necessary information in the details of the picture you may want to use.

I also grant permission outside of the above mentioned license to use my photos in any scientific context and they may be modified (cut, zoomed in, etc.) for that purpose alone. You may publish your findings illustrated with said pictures commercially. You must give credit mentioning the photographer. I will be thrilled if you let me know if my photos contributed to your science project or study. If you've got any questions on how to give appropriate credit in that context, just ask me.

If you use my pictures for reference and make art drawing or painting from them, that is totally fine. Go, get that art piece done! Use the mailadress linked above if you'd like to show me what you made!

These photos may NOT be used to train LLMs and other "AI". If I can prove, my photos went into your environment destroying plagiarism machine, there will be legal consequences.

Can I donate to "Sam's Bugs"?

I am still thinking about that. Maybe later. For now, all costs are covered by me personally. If anyone asks you for money to keep this wiki going - that's not me.

Who are the people in the photos?

Most of them are me in various stages of my life. You may see my face, my hand, my fingers, my feet or parts of me an animal is near or sitting on. That's just how it goes when you love animals, take photos of them and can't keep your grubby little fingers to yourself. It is not always ideal or advised to touch animals. In fact conservationists will tell you, it is rarely ever advised to touch any wildlife. Some of the animals I touch in pictures may bite or sting or might be venomous. So do as I say, don't do as I do: Don't touch wild animals.

Are these really your photos? Why are there so many?

I was born in 1988 so I've had a lot of time to look at animals, touch animals, feed animals, pet animals and yes, take photos of animals. So yes, everything published on this wiki is my own work. If you think a photo might look similar to one you saw somewhere else, that's a coincidence. If you have seen that exact photo somewhere else and it wasn't on one of my own profiles - that was stolen from me. None of them are AI generated, these are real photo memories of real animals, real living beings I met at some point.

What's the difference between pets and animals in captivity?

I classify animals as Pets when they have someone clearly caring for them on an emotional level. Zoo animals are labeled as "in captivity" because they have to "perform" for people. A true pet doesn't have to perform (feeding, educational events, shows) or produce (eggs, milk, wool) in any way, it gets fed, petted, has a nice little bed or a cozy cage and probably a name.

For example when you look at photos of Aldabra giant tortoises you will find some labeled as pets and some as in captivity. The pet ones were kept in hotel resorts and privately fenced in areas and had people near them telling you to go ahead pet them, scratch them, they are used to it and love it. The tortoises "in captivity" were photographed in a nature sanctuary in their place of origin, the Aldabra atoll. Some of them were used to humans and liked being petted, some ran from the camera, some were angry about humans even existing and some were calm as long as you just looked at them. These are not pets and they are not meant to be pets, even if some of the very old ones had a name and all of them were cared for. Does that make sense? I think it does.

Isn't the point of a wiki that people can discuss things and add to them?

Maybe. But these are my memories, my photos, my observations. This does not replace any professionally kept animal database out there. So no, I'm not going to open the wiki to discussion pages or have people edit anything. Sorry! If you would like to spend your time on editing or moderating things, make collections of things, scan photos and upload them somewhere or contribute to citizen science, here are a few cool projects:

• iNaturalist
• Zooniverse
• The Internet Archive

Did you create this wiki?

I created all of the content on this wiki. The wiki itself uses MediaWiki, an open source wiki solution, and the skin/template "Timeless". Apart from pre-packaged standard extensions that come with the setup the following extensions are in use right now:

• CategoryTree

Do you collect any data on me?

Literally none. I don't even run a visitor counter. I will never find out, you looked at this page. There are no statistics, no cookies, nothing. If you happen to run into me on the Fediverse or iNaturalist or any other platform and you know and like this wiki, let me know you enjoy it, because I am literally just yelling into the void at this point. But I like it that way, I respect your privacy.

Is this safe to use in my homework?

Kind of. Look, this website is not run by a scientist. It is, however, run by someone who has worked in journalism, advertising and text in general. If I state facts about a species, I will link to sources in most cases. But - there are also personal anecdotes on here. Do not cite my personal stories as scientific evidence. Also cross-check everything I tell you about the species you're researching. And good on you, hypothetical student, for not using AI. Keep it up!

Some of these photos look ass, why did you upload them?

I absolutely believe in documenting every animal I meet, not just the ones where I had a good camera at hand. I can see why, at a time where most of us have hightech cameras in our pockets at all times, it would seem weird to have taken the worst blurry oversaturated photo imaginable 20 years ago. But if you had known the compact digital cameras people could afford back then to make some memories, you'd actually be impressed by my photos. That's a lie. But yes, quality was way worse and in some cases I don't even have the 640x480px original photo stored anymore. These animals still deserve to be remembered and that's why they are on this wiki anyway.

Some pages don't have a lot of content - why?

This little wiki is growing over time. A page that only has one or two photos or no description can have several reasons. One is that maybe I only have the one picture. What am I supposed to do when I saw that species once twenty years ago on the other side of the globe, go back and take more photos? Pffff, you go and take more photos. The other reason is that sometimes I just want to upload a bunch of photos and not write a description. This is a hobby project, not a scientifically accurate encyclopedia. The description may be added later. No need to inform me, a page isn't complete yet, I know, lots of them aren't. Check the daily News to see if any older page has gained a description lately.

How do I report bugs?

Oh come on. COME ON! (In all honesty, if you encounter a bug on here, you're on your own. If you encounter a bug out in the tall grass, you better have your charmander ready to go.)

What is the "Sam says" section?

Some pages contain a "Sam says" section which is basically where I tell my tales. For as long as I can remember, people have been telling me, I should write down stuff I experience with animals around me and while I have been a writer full-time for years, this would likely be the most niche book published in a while. It does, however, fit nicely into this little wiki. So just remember: Whatever is written under "Sam says" is purely anecdotal. Don't cite any of this when looking at a species in a scientific way unless you're collecting anecdotes.

What's a "Slideshow"?

I started adding another view of the observational photos to some pages. With the "Slideshow" view, you can just look through photos without having to click every single observation. I am well aware that most of you are probably coming for the photos, not the information on a certain species. This makes it easier.

Will there be alt-text eventually?

I've been gotten used to adding alt-text for people who use screen readers or browser plugins that don't show them images (e.g. to save on data usage) on every app I use. It is crucial to me that everyone can enjoy the same content online. Howeeeever as mentioned above I feel like most people come here for the photos. I do not know if anyone who isn't able to view photos will ever use this wiki. If that's you, please hit me up on mastodon or via mail and I will get started on it. Right now (Jan 2026) there are over 500 photos on here - it would take a while.