Available emojis do not reflect the extent of biodiversity

Biologists have monitored the evolution of available emojis. Vertebrate animals are certainly well represented but other species are almost absent. An error according to these scientists for whom emoticons also make it possible to raise awareness and promote the diversity of life on Earth.

There are too many cats and not enough crustaceans and spiders in the emoji family, according to scientists who publish an analysis in the American journal iScience. These biologists evaluated the emojis related to nature and animals available on Emojipedia, an online catalog of emojis, and they followed their evolution between 2015 and 2022. Result: the current panel of emojis available does not represent at all the extent of biodiversity observed in nature.

While there are a lot of animal emojis, 76% of them are vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians or bony fish). Arthropods, that is to say insects, arachnids and crustaceans, would be totally under-represented, although they represent 1.3 million species compared to only 85,000 known species of vertebrates.

The researchers also note that there are no emoji to represent platyhelminths (flatworms) or nematodes (roundworms), even though there are more than 20,000 species of each. Not to mention plants, fungi and microorganisms.

A situation far from being anecdotal according to the researchers who explain that “While the collapsing biodiversity crisis may seem distant from life online, in our increasingly digitalized society we should not underestimate the potential of emojis to raise awareness and promote the diversity of life on Earth”. They therefore call for “development” and to “preserving diverse and inclusive emoji collections”.

They also highlight the positive arrival in 2020 of an earthworm from the Annelida family and of a red coral in 2021 to represent that of jellyfish and corals, but we are still very far from equitable representation. of the tree of life within the family of emojis, like a world where evidence of the fall in biodiversity on earth is accumulating.