When you’re as dead as a dodo, the sympathy only lasts a short while.
A study of the public’s reaction to news of a species extinction shows that those using social media mourn their loss, but only for a short time, Irish researchers have found.
As the world experiences what experts describe as the sixth mass extinction, researchers studied how people react to the news of animals, such as the last Pinta Island tortoise, Lonesome George, disappearing from the planet for good.
The team, led by the University of Galway in collaboration with University College Dublin and Maynooth University, turned to data and the world of ‘culturomics’ to measure how we react to the demise of animals and plants and whether we mourn their loss, or if we are numb to the effects.
Dr Kevin Healy, School of Natural Sciences and the Ryan Institute at the University of Galway, said: ‘In our study we tracked changes in tweets, and Wikipedia page visits before and after the extinction of eight species ranging from Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise, to more obscure species such as the bean snail.’
The research team analysed data of more than two million Wikipedia page visits and more than 100,000 Twitter tweets and retweets between 2007 and 2023, relating to eight species now extinct.
The long goodbye: Lonesome George, the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation hero, died in 2012
The Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed Rat is another species which has recently gone extinct
The West African Black Rhinoceros was declared extinct in 2011
These included the Pinta giant tortoise; the Christmas Island whiptail-skink; the Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed Rat; the Alagoas foliage-gleaner; Captain Cook’s bean snail; the Oahu tree snail; the Rabbs fringe-limbed treefrog and the West African black rhinoceros, to test if engagement increased after the extinction and how global it was.
The study showed that while tweets, retweets and posts on X relating to a species increased after its extinction, this was only a short-lived phenomenon.
In contrast, visits to Wikipedia pages relating to an extinction had longer-lasting engagement.
Dr Susan Canavan, of the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Galway and lead author on the study, said: ‘Overall, it does look like people care and are saddened by the news of extinction.
‘We see words like ‘RIP’ and ‘lost’ commonly appear, and that the location of tweets expand from close to the species range, to across the globe after extinction.’
Dr Healy added: ‘People’s engagement with conservation issues, such as extinction, does matter, as it can drive funding, or add support for conservation policy and even influence conversations on controversial topics such as attempting to bring species back from extinction using biotechnology.’
