Pathanga turns your phone into a field lab. Photograph a butterfly, get an AI identification in seconds, and log a sighting that becomes real biodiversity data — reviewed by experts, mapped across all 28 states.
Android 8.0+ · 1,500+ species offline · No ads, no paywall
Gemini Vision reads the photo through a lepidopterist's prompt and returns ranked matches resolved against the species catalogue — not a guess, a shortlist with a confidence score you can argue with.
Every species carries family and genus, habitat notes, wingspan range, the months it flies, its IUCN status and reference plates for egg, caterpillar, pupa, male and female.
Camera or gallery, GPS stamped automatically, place name resolved, notes if you want them. Choose public or private per sighting.
Sightings queue on-device and upload themselves when the bars come back — five automatic retries, photos and all. The guide stays cached for reading.
Density maps by state and district, plus everything recorded within 50 km of where you're standing — including the hotspot belts of the Western Ghats, the Northeast and the Himalaya.
Follow what other naturalists are finding today, with likes, comments and public explorer profiles.
Per-category switches — identification finished, sighting verified, something rare spotted nearby.
A dark theme built for dawn walks and a light one for glare, with haptics and large-text support.
Every sighting you've made, searchable, with saved species and a lifetime tally of states explored.
Up to five frames — upperside, underside, whatever it gives you before it moves on.
Photos go to the vision model, which returns ranked candidates matched to catalogued species.
Accept a match or pick your own from the guide, then file the sighting with its coordinates.
Moderators and verified researchers review the record before it joins the public map.
Most identification apps hand you a name and let you assume it's right. Pathanga hands you a number. Every match arrives with a confidence score, sorted into four honest bands — and anything under 30% is never shown at all.
Drag the marker to see how the app grades its own answer. The thresholds below are the real ones the app ships with.
Above 90% the model has locked onto diagnostic wing markings. The species is filled in for you; you just confirm.
Log one sighting a day to keep it alive. Miss the deadline by a few hours and a six-hour grace period covers you — because sometimes the light goes before the butterfly does.
Rarity tiers · earned per species, not per photo
Butterflies are the fastest indicator we have of a habitat turning. They respond to a changed monsoon, a cleared hedgerow or a warmer winter within a season. What they lack is observers — and that is the part a phone can fix.
Your sighting lands with photographs, coordinates, a timestamp and the AI's suggestion attached.
A moderator or a verified researcher confirms the species, corrects it, or asks for a better frame.
Verified records join the public distribution maps and the state-level counts that researchers draw on.
Install Pathanga, walk outside, and photograph the first butterfly you see. That single record is more than most habitats in India have from this year.