Animal Tracker vs Crow Scientist
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Animal Tracker
Follow the real-time movements of wild animals globally, tracked via GPS tags. Contribute to scientific research by uploading your own observations and photos of tagged animals, helping scientists interpret movement data.
- Real-time animal movement tracking
- Global migration route visualization
- Upload personal observations and photos
- Participate in scientific research projects
- Data management via Movebank
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With Animal Tracker, you can follow the movements of wild animals all over the world that are being tracked in near-real time! These movements are collected by tiny GPS tags carried by the animals and are stored at Movebank, a free online infrastructure used by hundreds of researchers to manage, share, analyze, and archive animal movement data. You can easily participate in our scientific research projects: Upload your real-life observations and photos of our tagged animals to Animal Tracker. Your observations are crucial for our scientists! We can determine the positions of the tagged animals but we are lacking behavioral observations - we can interpret our data much better with your additional observations. Therefore: become a scientist, become an Animal Tracker!
Crow Scientist
This app guides young learners to observe crows like real scientists. It features expert insights, photo and audio guides for identification, and tracks observations to earn shareable certificates. Users can even contribute their own crow photos.
- Expert-led crow observation guidance
- Photo and audio identification tools
- Observation tracking (daily, yearly, lifetime)
- Earnable certificates for completing lists
- User photo contributions
- Field notes for real-world observation
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“Crow Scientist” coaches young scientists to head out into the real world and observe crows the way a scientist does. In this free app, real-life crow scientists Colleen & John Marzluff share their knowledge, their photo archives, and their love of crows. Young scientists learn about crow behavior and how to make sense of the crows they observe. The app tracks which observations the young scientist has made—by day, by year, and by lifetime. Most observations are behaviors, such as “foraging,” and some are calls. The app includes photos of behaviors and audio recordings of crow calls to help the young scientist identify them. Checking all 18 items earns the young scientist a certificate to share or to print out. Another list describes observations associated with the breeding season, such as juvenile crows or their distinctive begging call. Young scientists love to learn about animal families, and they love to learn to identify crow families. They also learn that in the cycle of life most young crows don’t survive. Again, if the player checks all the items, they earn a certificate to share and print. Another list identifies rare observations. Can you catch a crow sunbathing? What about a crow with white feathers? it If you can complete this list, you get a certificate that most players will never earn. The young scientist can even be part of the app. Players can upload images to the app, adding them to the photos that are already there. “Field Notes” in the app offer some advice for meeting crows “in the wild.” Players are invited to share their drawings and photos with the Lead Crow Scientist on Instagram. John Marzluff is a renowned crow scientist, a professor, and an author. His books include Gifts of the Crow, In the Company of Crows and Ravens, Subirdia, and Dog Days, Raven Nights. Colleen Marzluff, the “Lead Crow Scientist,” researches crows with John and co-wrote Dog Days, Raven Nights with him. She is passionate about bringing a love of nature to children. Includes illustrations by Tony Angell, illustrator and co-author of Gifts of the Crow and In the Company of Crows and Ravens. Developed in partnership with Jonathan Tweet, designer of Clades Solo, the Clades card game, and the children’s book Grandmother Fish. Programmed by David Marques, scientist and creator of educational games at Ideate Games and Phosphor Learn. Made possible by backers on Kickstarter.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Crow Scientist at 4.3 against Animal Tracker's 3.4. Crow Scientist also leads on iOS requirement (11.0 vs 16.0). Animal Tracker's advantage is ratings volume (28 vs 3). On price, review sentiment, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Crow Scientist holds the better App Store score, 4.3 against 3.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Animal Tracker has 28 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 54% of Animal Tracker's written reviews are positive against 50% of Crow Scientist's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Animal Tracker ships an update every 5 weeks, Crow Scientist monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Animal Tracker | Crow Scientist |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.4 (28 ratings) | 4.3 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 53.7% of reviews — better | 50.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 28 — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Monthly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 54 MB | 120 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft | IdeateGames |
Customer experience
Animal Tracker
Crow Scientist
In-app purchases
Animal Tracker
No in-app purchases
Crow Scientist
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Animal Tracker free?
Is Crow Scientist free?
Which has better reviews, Animal Tracker or Crow Scientist?
Do Animal Tracker or Crow Scientist have ads?
Which is updated more often, Animal Tracker or Crow Scientist?
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