The charismatic megafauna such as tigers, elephants, lions, pandas and more could go extinct because they are so widely used in media and pop culture!

We all know exactly what a giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) looks like, but how many of us have actually seen one with our own eyes? I surely haven’t, and I bet most of you are in the same boat as me. Yet I am extremely familiar with this animal, and much of it has to do with how it is represented in the media and in pop culture.

Image is Public Domain.

What do I mean by media and pop culture? I’m thinking about TV series, movies, documentaries, cute drawing of pandas on t-shirts and other wearables, and pretty much every time you see either a photo or digital art of a panda. Due to these sources we all know what the giant panda looks like, but have you ever stopped to consider how this affect the problems of the real giant panda?

There have not been many studies done about this topic in the past, but an international team of researchers from Oregon State University has been doing studies to try to figure out the degree of difference between what people think of these charismatic animals versus how their survival chances actually are. But before they could to this they needed to figure out which animals were the most charismatic!

The top 10 global charismatic animals

A charismatic animal or charismatic megafauna is a term often used in the field of conservation biology, and refers to animals with a widespread appeal to most people. These are often used as mascots for conservation efforts, like how the giant panda became a symbol of the WWF. The point of having one of these animals is that it is easier to sell “conserving 100km2 to save the elephants” than “save 100km2 of African bushlands” to the general public, since people like big, cute animals.

Image by Bernard DUPONT, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

But back to the research. The scientists had to figure out which animals were actually the most charismatic animals, and ended up with a survey that asked over 4,500 people in 69 different countries. This gave them a pretty good idea, and the list of the top ten charismatic animals is:

1. Tiger (Panthera tigris)
2. Lion (Panthera leo)
3. Elephant (Loxodonta africana, L. cyclotis, and Elephas maximus)
4. Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis)
5. Leopard (Panthera pardus)
6. Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)
7. Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus)
8. Polar bear (Ursus maritimus)
9. Gray wolf (Canis lupus)
10. Gorilla (Gorilla beringei and G. gorilla)

Tiger - the most charismatic megafuna. Image by Raul654, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

As you can see from the list, the tiger is the most “charismatic”, but I would think that all ten of them are well-known to the general public.

Before we continue, please answer the following: How many of these do you think are considered to be facing a high risk of extinction by the IUCN Red List (either as Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered)?

How healthy are these ten animals?

As you might have guessed, the scientists also asked the same question I did above, and most people did not score so well. About 50 % of the people asked did not know that gorillas, cheetahs, leopards, giraffes and lions are endangered!

The elephants did a bit "better", but 35 % still believed that they were not in any danger. But I would say that 65 % of people knowing that they are facing extinction is pretty good, but there's still room for improvement.

Both pandas, tigers and polar bears did a lot better though, and only roughly 15 – 20 % did not know that they are faced by the threat of extinction. This could mean that the conservation programs for these species have been working as planned, so does this mean that only 3 out of 9 of the most charismatic species’ awareness efforts are good enough?

See how many who got the wrong answer about each species' endangerment status. Graph by © 2018 Courchamp et al., posted with CC BY 4.0.

Anyway, what number did you guess? The correct answer is that nine of these species are facing the threat of extinction, and only the grey wolf is doing fine. Despite the wolf not being in any immediate threat of extinction, it has lost a huge amount of habitat in the last century, and it might not be all that safe in the long-term.

As you can see, there is a huge gap between how people perceive these animals to be doing, and how they actually are doing. There are most likely several factors that affect this, but the researchers who wrote the paper has hypothesized that the major issue is the presence of a virtual population!

A “virtual population” could explain the degree of difference

The scientists behind the research paper believes that the reason why people are so unaware of the situation of these animals is because of their wide use in pop culture, commercials, on clothing, and stuff like that. This creates a “virtual population” of these animals, and people get bias to think that they are more of these animals than there really are.

As of right now, any company or organizations can freely use cartoons of tigers, polar bears or any other animal, and if you see the TV commercials later tonight, then you will surely see a few of the animals that are found on the list above.

They further believes that people are thinking along the lines of “these animals will never disappear, because everyone is aware of them”, again due to the huge virtual population that inflates their real numbers.

If that’s not enough, the research also points towards more public use of the animals leading to their downfall, since people are less inclined to donate to conservation efforts after getting their bias from seeing the virtual population. In order words, some of these might be going extinct because we use them so frequently in the entertainment industry!

I bet that you have seen this lion hundreds of times in your life!

How can we change this?

There is obviously no quick fix for this problem, so it’s up to us as a society to find good solutions to the problem. I believe raising real awareness is a good step, but some might think that we should go further and even ban the use of endangered animals for purely entertainment purposes. Or maybe make laws that require the use of them to also mention to real status of them? I honestly don’t know how to solve it, but it’s quite clear that we need to do something if we still want to have the animals outside of the virtual population that has been created.

Lacoste has already been doing their part. As you might know they have a crocodile as their logo, but recently partnered up with IUCN and changed the logo to 10 different endangered species. This is a great way to raise awareness of these species, but sadly this campaign was very limited.

The original Lacoste logo is seen in the window. Image © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for checking out my post! I hope you found it interesting, and perhaps even learned more about how threatened some of these species are? If so, then at least I have done a small part to educate about the issue.

I definitely recommend reading the original scientific article called The paradoxical extinction of the most charismatic animals by Courchamp F, Jaric I, Albert C, Meinard Y, Ripple WJ, Chapron G (2018). It’s published under the Creative Commons license, so it’s free to read, and even adapt and reuse.

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