London - Trips to the zoo may be out of the question at the moment, but it seems you can still invite the animals to visit you.
Families enduring the lockdown are using an augmented reality feature from Google to bring an array of exotic beasts to life in their homes.
Using Google Chrome on your smartphone, you search for the creature you want, by typing "giant panda" for example. Near the top of the results will be an image and a button "View in 3D". When pressed, this brings up your camera and the chosen animal will appear on screen, moving around, after about 30 seconds.
Anyone in view as you take the shot can then pretend to interact with the image. The resulting snap makes it look as though the animal was really in the room – as the children on this page have already found.
C-Net's Scott Stein put the 3D project to the test. Below he shares some easy steps:
"Google put 3D objects into Google search nearly a year ago," he writes. "To find them, you need to search on Google for the right ones. Think of an animal. Type it in. See what happens. Google has a lot of animals, and also some space objects like planets and satellites via Nasa. And the list of 3D objects may increase, based on indications from Google and Apple.
"First make sure you have an AR-ready device. For iPhones and iPads, you'll need iOS 11 or higher. And you'll need a phone or iPad that's not older than an iPhone 6S or SE, or a third-gen iPad Air, or fifth-gen iPad, or any iPad Pro. Or, a seventh-gen iPod Touch."