More emojis please: how limited animal, plant and fungus symbols could hinder conservation efforts and online conversations
- Emojis may be ubiquitous in global text conversations, but their conservation potential remains untapped, say a group of ecologists
- With so few animal and plant emojis available, conservationists are often unable to harness the power of social media to spread their ideas
Earth has millions of fungi species, but the official emoji library has only one: Amanita muscaria, the red-capped, white-spotted mushroom found in fairy-tale books and Super Mario Brothers video games.
A staggering 180,000 species of butterflies and moths flit about this planet, yet their lone emoji avatar is a generic blue butterfly that looks like a spring break tattoo.
There is a biodiversity crisis in our phones, according to a team of ecologists who have undertaken the most comprehensive survey to date of the flora and fauna of Emojipedia, the global directory of pictograms recognised by the international Unicode Standard.
Those little pictures power an enormous amount of global conversation. And when emoji biota are limited, the ecologists argue in a new paper, so is the scope of the natural world that we can talk about, advocate for and ultimately protect.
“The conservation of biodiversity can only progress with the participation and support of the society at large,” said co-author Stefano Mammola, an ecologist who focuses on subterranean biology. “You need effective communication.”