Podcast Assignment v2 PDF

Imagine this. You just had a long day, you get home, you sit down with your phone and set on to your doom scrolling. You come across a photo of a man posing with a wild animal. Intrigued, you read the photo's caption and you learn that it was posted by an animal researcher and suddenly, the photo is...

Imagine this. You just had a long day, you get home, you sit down with your phone and set on to your doom scrolling. You come across a photo of a man posing with a wild animal. Intrigued, you read the photo's caption and you learn that it was posted by an animal researcher and suddenly, the photo is less surprising. You see, the goal of these captions is to provide people with information indicating that the photos were taken in a research context and that these animals are handled or studied by professionals. This is often done to mitigate the impact of these photos on the animals, especially endangered species that would be more susceptible to the impacts of ecotourism or the demand for exotic pets. But does properly captioning these kinds of posts really do any good? This is what a group of researchers out of Princeton wanted to find out (Freund et al., 2024). In their relatively simple study, the Princeton researchers used the photos 2 knowingly endangered primates: Mountain Gorillas (Muresherwa et al., 2022) and Slender Loris, which, incidentally is a very small primate found in Sri Lanka (Carlton R. et al., 2023). Both photos consisted of the animal and a human. Using the photos of these two animals, the researchers made mock Instagram posts. For each of the animals, photos were taken and two posts were made. One photo series had a proper caption, (meaning the caption followed guidelines making it clear to anyone who saw it that the photos were taken in a research context), and the other series did not an appropriate caption. Using an online survey website, participants were shown one of the four mock Instagram posts and asked to rate a series of twelve statements on a Likert Scale. (For those who might not know, a Likert Scale is one of those five or seven point scales where the responses go from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree".) There was also a final statement requiring participants to write one word that came to mind when looking at the mock post. The same post was shown to the participants between each statement on the survey. For the purpose of their research the response to 5 statements were used. The statements used by the Princeton researchers were: "This animal is an endangered species"; "I would seek out an opportunity to interact with this animal"; "I would like to have this animal as a pet"; and "This animal would make a good pet". The fifth statement, "This post depicts wildlife research", was also analyzed in order to determine whether or not the study was effective in its intent. So, were the captions stating that the photos were taken in a research context effective at minimizing the impact of the post on the participants? In short, no. According to the Princeton researchers, the difference between the control group and the treatment group were negligible. For the Mountain Gorilla, around 56.5% of responders agreed or strongly agreed that they would like this animal as a pet. In the case of the Slender Loris, this number was around 61.5%. Responses also indicated around 70% percent of participants would seek out opportunities to interact with these animals. Finally, a large majority of responders (around 80% percent for the Mountain Gorilla and 72% for the Slender Loris) agreed that these animals were endangered species, but despite knowing this they would still seek these animals out! The only time that the caption seemed to have any effect was in the confidence of responders that the image depicted was from a research setting. There there was roughly a 5.8% higher chance for respondents from the treatment group (those participants whose images had an appropriate caption) to be more likely to strongly agree that the image depicted was from research setting. The researchers were unable to conclude whether the presence of a human in the photos had any effect on the responses, irrespective of the caption. What does all this mean? The researchers in this study were mostly concerned about the negative impact that these types of posts could have on animals, especially endangered primates, and it would appear that their concerns were justified as to the ineffectiveness of the captions. While there are some cases where increased interest in ecotourism for primates can have a positive impact on conservation efforts, (Lebrão et al., 2021; Muresherwa et al., 2022) the article serves as a reminder for researchers and consumers alike to think twice about the impact of these types of posts might have on endangered primates. So next time you come across photos of cute animals while doom scrolling, take time to read the caption and think critically before commenting "OMG I WANT THAT AS A PET!" followed by heart eye emojis. It may seem inconsequential, but those kinds of reactions may have undesired impacts on the animals. Carlton R., Daisy Caroline Mary A., & Griffith Michael G. (2023). Status and Threats of Slender Loris (Loris lydekkerianus) at Tiruchirappalli District, Tamil Nadu, India. *UTTAR PRADESH JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY*, *44*(20). https://doi.org/10.56557/upjoz/2023/v44i203649 Freund, C. A., Cronin, K. A., Huang, M., Robinson, N. J., Yoo, B., & DiGiorgio, A. L. (2024). Effects of captions on viewers' perceptions of images depicting human−primate interaction. *Conservation Biology*, *38*(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14199 Lebrão, C., Rosa, L. M. V., Paim, F. P., Nassar, P. M., El Bizri, H. R., & Silva, F. E. (2021). Community-Based Ecotourism and Primate Watching as a Conservation Tool in the Amazon Rainforest. *International Journal of Primatology*, *42*(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-021-00226-2 Muresherwa, G., Makuzva, W., Dube, C. N., & Amony, I. (2022). The management of mountain gorilla tourism in Uganda: Are the socio-economic benefits realised? *The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa*, *18*(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/td.v18i1.1136