Why humans just love some animals and hate others

PARIS: The Chinese giant salamander, the largest amphibian in the world, is not cute.

Weighing as much as an adult human, it has slimy brown skin, a giant mouth curled into a gormless grin and puny, mistrustful eyes.

It is also one of the world’s most endangered species. But unlike the giant panda, it is rarely in the news.

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 influence our reaction to endangered creatures.

“One of the biggest factors is ‘cuteness’: physical characteristics such as big eyes and soft features that elicit our parental instincts because they remind us of human infants,” Hal Herzog, emeritus professor at West Carolina University’s Department of Psychology, said.

Salamanders are a vital part of their ecosystem, just as worms are essential to soil health around the streams and lakes they live in.

Yet, like maggots, rats and snakes, the main instinct they inspire in humans is revulsion.

Graham Davey, a phobia specialist at the University of Sussex’s School of Psychology, said we learn to revile certain creatures at a young age.

“Disgust is a learned emotion. Babies are not born with it ... it’s probably transmitted socially, culturally and within families,” he said.

Some animals are reviled due to their resemblance to “primary disgusting things” such as mucus or faeces, Davey said, while others are perceived to pose a direct danger.

Popular culture has a huge effect on how society perceives animals. While the film Free Willy prompted sympathy for endangered orcas, Arachnophobia hardly helped spiders’ cause.

Nor is it just the public at large who are liable to “speciesism”, or discrimination against other species in favour of our own.

A study in 2017 found a strong correlation between society’s preferred animals and those most studied in scientific research.

“Maybe that’s because it’s easier to get money” to study well-known animals, said Frederic Legendre of France’s National History Museum.

Most megafauna species remain in peril. The next time you see a picture of a Chinese giant salamander, remember that there’s more to saving wild species than looks. — AFP