Everyone cares that pandas and polar bears are endangered because, let's face it, they're adorable. In enviro speak, they're known as “charismatic megafauna”—they're large animals with popular appeal. Also included on this list are elephants, lions, tigers, sharks, and whales. In short, looks matter.
Conservation organizations love these animals because they easily capture our attention. And by proxy, they get folks to care about the need for conservation. Our tuna would be less “dolphin-safe” if dolphins looked less like dolphins and more like the Blob Fish.
Unfortunately, that logic isn't backed up by evidence. A study released in 2000 which looked at maps of the ranges of the Big Five African mammals popular with tourists—the African buffalo, elephant, rhinos, lions, and leopards—found that conserving their habitat was no better at representing the diversity of mammals and birds than choosing areas at random. In other words, the areas where these animals inhabit aren't necessarily the best areas to protect if your goal is maximizing the number of species that are saved from extinction.
And by focusing on the big guys, we're reinforcing the idea that the only animals worth saving are the ones humans find attractive. But just because a species is small, or ugly, doesn't mean that it deserves to be extirpated.
So, in that vein, we've created a photo gallery based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. Originally launched in 1964, it's one of the most comprehensive guides to the global conservation status of biological species.
Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we think it's safe to say that the endangered species we've collected below are unlikely to win any pageants. But we think they're just as worthy of our attention—and our protection.