Why do some animals strike a chord with humans, prompting them to donate millions towards their conservation, while others draw little more than disgust? Size, intelligence, behaviour, rarity, how closely an animal resembles the human form -- all play a part in our reaction to various endangered creatures.
In this Thursday, May 31, 2018 photo, a giant panda wanders through a village in Wenchuan County in southwestern China's Sichuan province. The Chinese giant salamander, the largest amphibian in the world, is not cute.
An expert in human-animal relationships, Herzog said the dark rings around pandas' eyes triggered humans nurturing instincts. "Disgust is a learned emotion. Babies are not born with it... it's probably transmitted socially, culturally and within families," he said. Whereas the movie "Free Willy" prompted a wave of sympathy for the protection of endangered orcas, "Arachnophobia" hardly helped spiders' cause.Even the depiction of fictional creatures can have a knock-on effect on public perception towards certain animals."Seeing the one from the first film that had that mucus-y drawl dripping from the alien's mouth... sensitises people to disgusting things," Davey said.
And popular species make money in return, according to Christo Fabricius from WWF -- a conservation group indelibly linked to its panda logo.Not that favouring certain cute or charismatic species is necessarily a bad thing for conservation.
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