What Wild Animals Do Kids Care About Most and Why Does It Matter?

M Nils Peterson,Hannah G Shapiro,R Brian Langerhans,Kristin F Mcnair,Kathryn T Stevenson

doi:10.3389/frym.2020.00014

Abstract

Wild animals are disappearing from the earth, or going extinct, far faster than normal. People working to save wildlife from extinction are called conservation biologists, and sometimes they must pick which wildlife species to save. Many conservation biologists are trying to protect wildlife so kids can live in a world where those animals still exist. So, knowing which animals kids care about is important. Our work revealed that kids care most about beautiful animals like flamingos and wolves, but kids from different places care about different kinds of animals. Kids from areas further from the ocean cared most about animals that were naturally in that environment, like black bears and white-tailed deer. Kids from a small island cared more about animals in the ocean and animals that were originally turned loose by people, like wild pigs and cats. Our work shows how conservation biologists can work to help the animals that kids value.

Highlights

AGE: Wild animals are disappearing from the earth, or going extinct, far faster than normal
Our work revealed that kids care most about beautiful animals like flamingos and wolves, but kids from di erent places care about di erent kinds of animals
Major extinction events were caused by natural disasters, like giant asteroids hitting the earth, but extinction is caused by things people do, mainly damaging natural landscapes when building new houses and farms, causing rapid climate change, directly killing wildlife for food or to sell, and releasing invasive species [ ]

Summary

WHY DOES IT MATTER WHICH ANIMALS KIDS CARE

Conservation biologists are scientists who work to save wildlife from extinction They often need to choose which kinds of wild animals, or wildlife, to protect. Some boys like scary animals, like spiders, more than girls do, and some girls like cute animals, like hedgehogs, more than boys do [ ] Both kids and conservation biologists often care most about species that are important in nature [ ]. To evaluate whether location or being a girl or boy mattered, we used mathematical techniques known as statistics to analyse our data [ ] We used these mathematical methods to see if two things about kids, their gender and where they lived, predicted which groups of species they cared about most

WHICH ANIMALS DID KIDS CARE ABOUT MOST?

HOW CAN THESE RESULTS BE EXPLAINED?

HOW CAN THESE RESULTS BE USED FOR PROTECTING SPECIES?

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