A widespread opinion is that conservation efforts disproportionately benefit charismatic species. However, this doesn't mean that they are not threatened, and which species are "charismatic" remains unclear. Here, we identify the 10 most charismatic animals and show that they are at high risk of imminent extinction in the wild. We also find that the public ignores these animals' predicament and we suggest it could be due to the observed biased perception of their abundance, based more on their profusion in our culture than on their natural populations. We hypothesize that this biased perception impairs conservation efforts because people are unaware that the animals they cherish face imminent extinction and do not perceive their urgent need for conservation. By freely using the image of rare and threatened species in their product marketing, many companies may participate in creating this biased perception, with unintended detrimental effects on conservation efforts, which should be compensated by channeling part of the associated profits to conservation. According to our hypothesis, this biased perception would be likely to last as long as the massive cultural and commercial presence of charismatic species is not accompanied by adequate information campaigns about the imminent threats they face.

Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Hydrobiology Na Sádkách České Budějovice Czech Republic

Center for Tropical Research Institute of the Environment and Sustainability University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles California United States of America

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles California United States of America

Department of Ecology Grimsö Wildlife Research Station Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Riddarhyttan Sweden

Ecologie Systématique and Evolution Univ Paris Sud CNRS AgroParisTech Université Paris Saclay Orsay France

Global Trophic Cascades Program Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society Oregon State University Corvallis Oregon United States of America

Institute for Multidisciplinary Research University of Belgrade Kneza Viseslava Belgrade Serbia

Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries Müggelseedamm Berlin Germany

Université Paris Dauphine Paris Sciences and Lettres Research University CNRS LAMSADE Paris France

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Biocultural aspects of species extinctions

Societal attention toward extinction threats: a comparison between climate change and biological invasions