Out of mind, still out of sight?
How well do Tasmanians know the wildlife that lives alongside us? Glen Bain puts our species-recognition skills to the test, and asks why being able to tell a bettong from a bandicoot may matter more than we think.
When I moved house last year, I didn’t expect to find a story so relevant to WildTracker hidden behind a rusting fridge and a tangle of cobwebs.
Behind them was a collage of yellowing newspaper clippings from the 1970s: an article on Lord Hobart, ‘From corset smuggler to Admiral of the Turkish Fleet’; an announcement ‘Hobart’s Casino on Schedule’; and an advertisement inviting readers to ‘Sail with the Derwent Clipper’. Among them was a more recent article from The Sunday Tasmanian, published in 2004 and headlined ‘Out of mind, and out of existence’.
In a survey of 100 Tasmanians from Hobart and the Huon Valley, the article reported that only 3% of people could identify a bettong. Just 11% could correctly name a bandicoot. And only 6% had the pleasure of knowing what a potoroo was.
So, 22 years later, has anything changed? And why should we care if people can’t recognise our local species?
Mostly for fun, we’ve been asking some of you to find and identify the animals in a standard set of camera trap images collected on TLC reserves. Everyone from ecologists to school students has had a go, and while the results weren’t exactly gathered under TCE exam conditions, they still tell an interesting story.
The good news: of 264 responses, everyone recognised the echidna and all but one recognised the wombat. But, as in the 2004 survey, eastern bettongs were again the least recognised species, with only 25% of respondents identifying them correctly.
To be fair, the outcome may have been different with a clearer photo, perhaps one taken in daylight with the bettong politely posing to show its key features: a long white-tipped tail, oversized rear legs and a drag car-like stance, leaning forward with tiny T. rex arms.
The Tasmanian devil results show how much people rely on familiar features. When a devil had its classic white markings, 98% of respondents identified it correctly. When shown an entirely black devil, this dropped to 83%.
These results reflect many conversations we’ve had with Tasmanians who are sadly unaware of the bettong’s existence. Meanwhile, 76% of participants correctly identified a photo showing only the hind leg of a fallow deer! Whether through management issues, media exposure, or childhood stories, introduced deer are simply more recognisable than a native species many people have never encountered.
The long-nosed potoroo was the next one people struggled to identify. Then came bandicoots. Around half of people successfully identified the eastern barred bandicoot, and about a third picked the southern brown bandicoot. Another 20-35% knew they were looking at bandicoots, but either didn’t name the species, or didn’t know there were two to distinguish. It was similar with the quolls: most people knew they were looking at a quoll, but 30-50% couldn’t say whether it was eastern or spotted-tailed.
On average, people correctly identified the animal in 11 of the 15 photos. That’s not a bad result. But recognising wildlife isn’t just a pub quiz skill; it influences how we value and protect the species around us.
Research consistently shows that people are more likely to care about, and support the conservation of, species they can name and recognise
One study of Zoos Victoria’s Love Your Locals campaign found a similar pattern.
Most people (70-80%) could identify a Tasmanian devil, perhaps because its threats are well known, it has obvious charisma, and, of course, there’s that famous Warner Bros character. In contrast, just 15-20% could recognise a bandicoot, and fewer than 3% could identify the eastern barred specifically.
That recognition mattered. The more recognisable a species was, the more people liked it, and the more likely they were to prioritise its conservation.
Another study found that species named after celebrities attracted much more public interest online. The authors even suggested that naming threatened species after famous people could help build support for their conservation among the public, especially for animals that lack the cuddly appeal of a koala. Think of the Angelina Jolie trapdoor spider (Aptostichus angelinajolieae), a South American wasp named after Jackie Chan (Acrotaphus jackiechani), or the shrub Macrocarpaea dies-viridis, named by scientists who were clearly fans of Green Day.
If you don’t know what you’re looking at, you’re far less likely to notice when it disappears
Here in Lutruwita/Tasmania, there’s also the issue of some of our native hoppers being mistaken for introduced rodents. Historical names like ‘rat-kangaroo’ probably didn’t help. Research has shown that merely introducing people to a species and explaining the threats it faces can be sufficient to increase the amount of support they allocate to it in a hypothetical funding exercise.
Perhaps if more of us got to know bandicoots, bettongs and potoroos, and understood that they’re native and rather special, we might be more forgiving when they dig holes in the lawn or sample the occasional dahlia tuber.
Tasmania is an island refuge for species that have disappeared or declined on mainland Australia but still persist here. We’re lucky to have so much wildlife around us, including in our cities. But as The Sunday Tasmanian article suggested more than 20 years ago, when wildlife becomes part of the background, it risks becoming invisible.
References
Bevilacqua, S. 2004, ‘Out of mind, and out of existence’, The Sunday Tasmanian, 9 May, p. 16.
Pearson, E.L., Mellish, S., McLeod, E.M., Sanders, B. & Ryan, J.C. (2022) Can we save Australia’s endangered wildlife by increasing species recognition? Journal for Nature Conservation, 69, 126257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2022.126257
Blake, K., Anderson, S.C., Gleave, A. & Veríssimo, D. (2024) Impact on species’ online attention when named after celebrities. Conservation Biology, 38(2), e14184. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14184
Banner photo by Glen Bain.