Thanks to Defector for covering our new study! If The Prince and Princess of Wales are editing their images, then how about we do the same for endangered wildlife?

📸🐘 Do airbrushed animals get more conservation love? New study found people willing to donate more to digitally enhanced wildlife. But can we really yassify our way to saving wildlife? 🤔 More in Defector

Paper: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pa…

defector.com/honey-they-yas…

'Instead of attempting to measure animal welfare, the role of science should be seen as identifying, rectifying and preventing welfare problems.' David Fraser, 1995

Our 'bias for beauty' has implications for animal conservation funding.

Deakin University PhD student Meg Shaw's (@meghaniamh) research shows cuter animals attract more donations – even when the 'cuteness' is Photoshopped.

bit.ly/3TikxR3

This happened to me when I won a prestigious award at my university, and… nobody heard about it

The Government has committed to the establishment of a new federal agency called Environment Protection Australia (EPA). Our survey of 3,400 Australian found that 60% of Australians support this.

The Australian community also recognise that to be effective the agency must be…

It makes me mad that we've got all these incredible PhDs with important work to do to make our world better but instead of doing it they're stuck chasing meaningless metrics, getting paid peanuts, and putting up with toxic colleagues nobody will ever do anything about! 😩

If you are a wildlife researcher, zoo professional, or have any other job that brings you into contact with wildlife for work: just don't post selfies of yourself and your study species.

Wildlife pros: have you ever posted a selfie of you and your study species to social media? Our new study, published OA today in Conservation Biology, shows this isn't good for conservation, EVEN IF you explain the context/ provide disclaimers in the caption: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/co…

Time to stop taking selfies with animals fellow scientists. I've been seeing it too often, and there are very few times where I haven't been concerned that the animals' welfare wasn't affected.

theconversation.com/wildlife-selfi…

Wildlife selfies harm animals − even when scientists share images with warnings in the captions theconversation.com/wildlife-selfi… via The Conversation U.S.

Interesting paper: does changing what a Kākāpō looks like influence donations to save it (and other species)? Interested to hear Sirocco Kākāpō, Dr Andrew Digby & Nicola Toki's reactions!
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pa…

Diogo Veríssimo diogoverissimo.bsky.social Fascinating! There's almost something grotesque about the right image to my mind, almost like uncanny valley, and then I read the findings under the image.