Kids care more about turtles, snails, and butterflies than adults do. But kids’ preferences also differ from those of adults in some ways. Megafauna are large, wild animals, typically larger than humans, such as bears, whales, crocodiles, ostriches, great white sharks, and giant squids. Both kids and adults care about mammals and birds more than reptiles and insects, and they both like fascinating megafauna. Kids’ wildlife preferences are similar to adults’ preferences in some ways. So, the types of wildlife kids care about are important, because conservation biologists are working to save species for kids, and kids can help their parents to help conservation biologists succeed! Parents tend to trust their kids’ opinions. Second, kids are great at helping their parents decide to do things that are good for nature, including recycling, stopping littering, working to slow down climate change, and saving wildlife from extinction. First, one of the main reasons people work to stop extinction is to ensure that many species are still around for today’s kids, and future kids, to enjoy. Even though kids do not vote, pay for wildlife conservation, or make decisions about where to build houses, their opinions matter for multiple reasons. Recently, scientists have started studying which species kids care about most. Similarly, adults like birds and mammals more than they like snakes, lizards, and insects. Scientists found that adults tend to care most about beautiful animals, like colorful birds, and exciting animals, like lions and tigers. People must choose to pay for protecting places where wildlife live and they must also be willing to stop doing the things that hurt wildlife, like letting pet cats live outside where they eat birds and other small animals, or building houses in places where wild animals need to live. This is a good idea, because efforts to save species only succeed when people help. Recently, conservation biologists have decided to also consider how much species matter to people. Common reasons for using limited resources to save a species include whether the number of animals of that species is declining, whether the total number is low, and whether that species only lives in one small place, and could easily become extinct. Invasive species are species that did not naturally live in an area but spread rapidly and cause damage after people release them.Īs conservation biologists cannot save every species, they must choose reasons to focus on saving a few species.
In the past, major extinction events were caused by natural disasters, like giant asteroids hitting the earth, but now 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. Species are going extinct up to 1,000 times faster than is natural. This choice must happen because there is not enough money, time, or conservation biologists to save all the different types of wildlife that are going extinct. They often need to choose which kinds of wild animals, or wildlife, to protect. Why Does It Matter Which Animals Kids Care About?Ĭonservation biologists are scientists who work to save wildlife from extinction. Our work shows how conservation biologists can work to help the animals that kids value. 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. Kids from areas further from the ocean cared most about animals that were naturally in that environment, like black bears and white-tailed deer. 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. So, knowing which animals kids care about is important. Many conservation biologists are trying to protect wildlife so kids can live in a world where those animals still exist. People working to save wildlife from extinction are called conservation biologists, and sometimes they must pick which wildlife species to save.
Wild animals are disappearing from the earth, or going extinct, far faster than normal.