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What Wild Animals Do Kids Care About Most and Why Does It Matter?

- M. Nils Peterson, Hannah G. Shapiro, Kathryn T. Stevenson , Kristin F. McNair,& R. Brian Langerhans

We discovered that whether kids were from an island or continent was the most important factor for predicting the groups of species they cared about most. Being from an island or a continent predicted 26% of the species kids listed. Being a girl or boy also mattered, but was much less important and only predicted 3% of the species kids cared about. As you might guess, kids cared a lot about big, exciting animals, including sharks, birds, and mammals. Differences between the island and continental kids were huge. Kids from Andros Island cared about fish, crabs, insects, flamingos, cats, dogs, and pigs more than kids from North Carolina did. On the other hand, kids from North Carolina cared more about deer, bears, foxes, wolves, and rabbits than kids from Andros Island did. Some of these differences make sense, because fish and crabs are more important on an island than on a continent, and Andros has wild flamingos, but North Carolina does not.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2020.00014

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