Beyond Cute: All Animals Can Become Social Media Sensations

In the age of cutesy #mammal sensations like pygmy hippo #MooDeng the chubby, pink-cheeked pygmy #hippo baby – many people believe that social media shares are correlated to cuteness. They are wrong, according to a recent study, more obscure and unusual animals like #insects, #amphibians, #reptiles and #insects can enjoy a generous portion of the social media limelight. Help them every time you shop and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/hFfsonkN1Vc

Cutesy #animals like #MooDeng🦛 the chubby-cheeked pygmy #hippo lead many to believe #socialmedia shares are correlated to #cuteness – they’re wrong. All animals can enjoy the spotlight Protect them when u #Boycott4Wildlife #BoycottPalmOil @palmoildetect https://wp.me/pcFhgU-974

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Cutesy or not: animals can be showcased on social media with the right storytelling and still gain big audience engagement

Remember the popularity contests of high school? Often our athletic, genetically gifted classmates got the most attention: the school captain, the footy team captain, the prom queen. But popularity contests don’t just exist in school. And in the world of conservation, it can be a matter of survival for the “winners” and “losers”.

If we asked you to list every animal species you can think of, chances are that list would be full of mammals and birds, with very few reptiles, fish, amphibians and invertebrates. So why do we focus so much on some species and so little on others?

Our recent study challenges assumptions that people simply find mammals and birds much more engaging than other species. When these neglected species were posted to Instagram by wildlife organisations and researchers, there were no great differences in the likes they attracted.

This has implications for which species we focus on to enlist public support for conservation. A more complete picture of the wildlife around us would help reduce glaring imbalances in conservation outcomes.

Our cognitive bias towards the cutest and fluffiest

For years, we’ve assumed humans engage more with the “cute and fluffy” species – often known as “charismatic megafauna” – and these are the animals that are shown to us on TV, film and advertising. There is evidence to support this preference. People will often choose to donate to mammals and birds over other species, and mammals and birds are mentioned more on social media.

However, mammals and birds make up less than 10% of all animals on Earth. With the media we’re consuming, we’re just not getting an accurate picture of the world of wildlife that surrounds us.
Where this gets worrying is in the fight for species survival. Our planet is in an extinction crisis, with species becoming extinct at extraordinary rates.

However, our focus on mammals and birds means cute and fluffy animals receive more research attention and funding. Conservation outcomes for these species are better than for reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. Tellingly, 94% of all threatened species on the IUCN Red List are reptiles, fish, amphibians and invertebrates.

Do people really prefer charismatic megafauna?

Our study suggests this issue may be more complex than first thought. Many Australian conservation organisations use social media platforms, such as Instagram, to share their work and connect communities with wildlife. But in the busy, ever-updating world of Instagram feeds, which images are the most effective at grabbing someone’s attention?

We set out to examine which Australian wildlife species were most often posted to Instagram and which had the highest levels of engagement. Based on the belief that people will engage more with charismatic megafauna, we expected mammals and birds to be shown more frequently and to elicit higher engagement than the “creepy crawlies” such as amphibians and insects.

We analysed 670 wildlife images posted to Instagram by wildlife organisations and research group accounts in 2020 and 2021. For each image, we noted the species posted in the image. As a measure of engagement, we recorded the number of “likes” the image received in proportion to each organisation’s follower count.
An example of the Instagram posts that were analysed, and the information collected. Meghan Shaw, CC BY

What did the study find?

Our results were surprising and provide hope for the future of underrepresented wildlife.

Although the majority of wildlife images posted to Instagram by these conservation organisations were of mammals and birds (73.7% to be precise), our analysis of image engagement uncovered a surprising and promising trend. Mammals were, indeed, more engaging than other species, but only by a tiny amount. We found birds, reptiles, invertebrates, amphibians and fish were all equally as engaging for Instagram users.
The amount of engagement posts featuring each group of animal (taxon) received. Categories that do not share letters are significantly different from each other, e.g. mammals (b) received higher engagement than invertebrates, birds and reptiles (a) but not molluscs, fish or amphibians (ab). All significant differences were relatively small (1-2%). Author provided, CC BY

Are we ready to sympathise with weird bugs?

Perhaps it is time to give our creepy crawlies more of the media limelight. The more we see a wide diversity of animals, the more likely we are to support their conservation.

The Theory of Repeated Messaging suggests when we are repeatedly exposed to something, we are more likely to become familiar with, engage with and support it. Research has shown when we put effort into promoting underrepresented species, we can improve their chances of receiving a public donation by 26%.
Will we come to love the hibiscus harlequin bug (Tectocoris diophthalmus)? Magdalena_b/Flickr
Our findings suggest the media and conservation organisations can promote endangered species across all walks of life – from lizards to bugs and fish to frogs – without compromising viewer engagement. This will increase our knowledge of the amazing diversity of animals that we share this planet with. In turn, this will lead to underrepresented species receiving more of the conservation support they need to survive.

Zoos Victoria is already leading the way. The endangered native golden-rayed blue butterfly features in the new Totes for Wildlife campaign to conserve its natural habitat.

Perhaps we tend to prefer mammals and birds because we see them more, and not just because they look a certain way. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Written by Meghan Shaw, PhD Student in Conservation Social Science, Deakin University; Bill Borrie, Associate Professor, Environmental Management and Sustainability, Deakin University; Emily McLeod, Senior Social Science Research Manager, Zoos Victoria, and PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland, and Kelly K Miller, Associate Professor of Environment and Society, Deakin University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ENDS

Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture

Global
South America
S.E. Asia
India
Africa
West Papua & PNG

Sunda Clouded Leopard Neofelis diardi

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Glaucous Macaw Anodorhynchus glaucus

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Attenborough’s Long-Beaked Echidna Zaglossus attenboroughi

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Nancy Ma’s Night Monkey Aotus nancymaae

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Maned Wolf Chrysocyon brachyurus

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Tufted Ground Squirrel Rheithrosciurus macrotis

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Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing

Read more about RSPO greenwashing

Lying
Fake labels
Indigenous Land-grabbing
Human rights abuses
Deforestation
Human health hazards

A 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)

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The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

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How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

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3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

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#amphibians #animal #animalBehaviour #AnimalBiodiversityNews #animalCommunication #animalCruelty #animalExtinction #animalIntelligence #animalRights #animals #biodiversity #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #cuteness #deforestation #hippo #insects #Mammal #MooDeng #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #PygmyHippopotamusChoeropsisLiberiensis #reptiles #socialmedia #study #vegan

"How human and ecosystem health are intertwined: Evidence from vulture population collapse in India"

https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/how-human-and-ecosystem-health-are-intertwined-evidence-vulture-population

Basically, vultures were very important in certain areas to remove cadavers from the area - such as countless cows raised by *lacto-vegetarians*. ...

An anti-inflammatory medicine was introduced about 3 decades ago to help treat cows (probably helps with milk production).

The substance stuck around in cows who died and were dumped "outside" or "elsewhere", as trash is often dumped.

Vultures ate dead "tainted" cows and also died.

As vultures died, other carrion eating animals came by and feasted, but they were not as nice as the vultures for the ecosystem and for the humans in the area.

Note that vultures often die because of eating poisoned animals, poisoned by humans. Lead, for example, is a common deadly poison left behind by bullets from hunters. Many animals deemed "pests" are poisoned and end up being eaten by a vulture who dies later. That's aside from the various poachers just outright killing vultures.

#goVegan #cows #vultures #poison #India #carrion #ecology #biodiversity #ecosystemServices #cowMilk #milk #dairy

Alpine Marmot - Marmota marmota

The alpine marmot (Marmota marmota) is a large ground-dwelling squirrel, from the genus of marmots. It is found in high numbers in mountainous areas of central and southern Europe, at heights between 800 and 3,200 m (2,600–10,500 ft) in the Alps, Carpathians, Tatras and Northern Apennines. In 1948 they were reintroduced with success in the Pyrenees, where the alpine marmot had disappeared at end of the Pleistocene epoch. (Text Source: Wikipedia)

My passion is wildlife photography and every day I will showcase one animal in my feed. I hope I can bring the beauty of nature into your home and show how amazing nature is.
Every single animal needs our protection as they all play an important part in our survival.

Unfortunately, humans have wiped out on average 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970 a recent study finds. With my wildlife photo a day, I hope to showcase a fraction of them before they are gone…

#wildlifephotography #wild #animals #wildlifeplanet #conservation #natgeowild #wildlifeonearth #wildlife #wildlifephoto #biodiversity #environment #wildlifelovers #spohrphotography #mammal #placentals #marmot #europe #photography

We are reframing ecosystems as infrastructure

"Living landscapes are a form of infrastructure in the sense that forests, for example, clean our water and our air."

"...It is not enough simply to restore natural systems to their former condition. “There is no ‘pure nature’ that’s outside of us, untouched up there in the foothills somewhere...We’ve ‘made’ the world what it is already, so now we need to take a very, very strong hand in the remaking. … A big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built.”

"A big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built. Rather than thinking of design as something merely additive or “beautifying,” we need to think about undoing our environmental mistakes, like damming rivers, bulkheading our shorelines, and concretizing streams. We need to start making room for rivers and floods."

"What we are trying to do is integrate many local projects into a larger-scale systemic approach, into a larger-scale resilience plan."
>>
https://e360.yale.edu/features/kate-orff-interview
#extinction #biodiversity #nature #restore #depave #RegenerativeDesign #MobilityDesign #ReFraming #beautification #rivers #floods #NativeForests #transition #resilience #ClimateEmergency