The twenty most charismatic species

Abstract

Charisma is a term commonly used in conservation biology to describe species. However, as the term "charismatic species" has never been properly defined, it needs to be better characterized to fully meet its potential in conservation biology. To provide a more complete depiction, we collected information from four different sources to define the species currently considered to be the most charismatic and to understand what they represent to the Western public. First, we asked respondents of two separate surveys to identify the 10 animal species that they considered to be the most charismatic and associate them with one to six traits: Rare, Endangered, Beautiful, Cute, Impressive, and Dangerous. We then identified the wild animals featured on the website homepages of the zoos situated in the world's 100 largest cities as well as on the film posters of all Disney and Pixar films, assuming in both cases that the most charismatic species were generally chosen to attract viewers. By combining the four approaches, we set up a ranked list of the 20 most charismatic animals. The majority are large exotic, terrestrial mammals. These species were deemed charismatic, mainly because they were regarded as beautiful, impressive, or endangered, although no particular trait was discriminated, and species were heterogeneously associated with most of the traits. The main social characteristics of respondents did not have a significant effect on their choices. These results provide a concrete list of the most charismatic species and offer insights into the Western public's perception of charismatic species, both of which could be helpful to target new species for conservation campaigns.

Fig 1. Relationships between charisma and the four main surrogates for conservation studies.

Fig 2. Twenty most charismatic animal species, in ranking order.

The relative score, i.e., the score for the four survey sources relative to the first ranked (tiger), shows a relatively homogeneous distribution.

Fig 3. Proportions of traits for the 20 most charismatic species compared to the global proportion.

The chi-squared test, used to assess whether trait proportions are significantly more attributed to a given species, is represented by the p-value significance *** <0.0001, ** <0.01, * <0.05 and by a white square for non-significance. The p-value is not represented when a trait proportion is less often attributed to a species (see details in S3 Table).

Fig 4. Illustration of the GLMM estimates, which represent the association between species and traits.

See S4 Table for the GLMM estimates.