The pretty bird bias is real for researchers

When it comes to picking species to research, scientists in North America are mostly interested in the beautiful bird next door—less attractive birds don’t get anywhere near the same attention.

“Basically, if you are a drab bird that occurs in a limited range with few universities near it—that’s like the triple whammy,” said TWS member and Out in the Field co-organizer Silas Fischer, a PhD candidate at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

During university work, Fischer had been studying the gray vireo (Vireo vicinior)—“a small, drab bird that occurs in the Southwest.” Not many people seemed to care about the bird—literature on the species is scarce. Fischer began to wonder if the bird’s appearance had anything to do with this apparent lack of scholarly attention compared to “super flashy warblers that birders go bonkers over.”

A growing body of research has shown that people’s perceptions of wildlife may ultimately affect everything from the conservation dollars a species receives to the attention species receive in nature documentaries. The Ugly Animal Preservation Society has arisen to try to give more attention to less charismatic species, some of which are in just as much need of protection as the lions (Panthera leo) and giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) of the world. On the other hand, the charisma of species like wild horses (Equus ferus) can make the management of species that damage the environment more complicated.

In a study published recently in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Fischer and their colleagues wanted to see whether this bias was apparent in the study of North American songbirds.

How to rate a bird’s rizz

The team got a list of songbirds and their close relatives found in the U.S. and Canada and developed a rating system for each based on looks. Birds rated highly had features like bright colors, size, lots of color contrast and features like iridescence “because people like shiny things,” Fischer said. In practice, this included species like the cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum), with its look reminiscent of `80s glam rock makeup. Others with extraordinary features also got high ratings, like the scissor-tailed flycatcher (Tyrannus forficatus), whose name gives a clue as to the bird’s natural charisma. The highest-scoring birds were the Bohemian waxwing (B. garrulus)—a mohawked species that looks like it has a custom sports car trim on its wingtips—and the iridescent blue and green tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor).

On the opposite end of the scale were birds that were mostly gray, black or brown and lacked interesting patterns, iridescence or heavily contrasting hues. “The lowest scoring species on the visual scale were the chimney swift and black swift,” Fischer said.

The study wasn’t so shallow as to only care about good looks, though. The researchers also examined the size of a species’ natural range as well as how many universities sat within their ranges. This information provided clues into whether ease of access to species might also play a role in the scholarly attention they receive. “It’s probably not just the species’ visual appeal but how accessible it is to people who might study them,” Fischer said. “Species that are just out of sight, out of mind, may be less studied as well.”

The researchers combed through 27,000 peer-reviewed papers published between 1965 and 2020 to determine which species got the most attention.

Good looks, well-traveled and a college education

The team found that, for a bird, the best chance to get studied in a peer-reviewed journal article was to be good-looking and wide-ranging in an area close to various colleges. The top 10% of attractive species were studied three times more than the ugliest 10%. Birds in the top 10% of range size were studied 3.8 times more than the bottom 10%, and birds with the top 10% most universities in their ranges were studied 3.5 times more than the bottom 10% in that category.

In other words, drab birds like Fischer’s gray vireos, which occur in the Southwest in an area graced with fewer universities than regions like the Northeast, were the focus of fewer studies.

“It’s kind of like the pretty privilege,” Fischer said, comparing the findings to the idea that humans will treat other humans better when they think they are better looking.

Fischer’s team also examined the covers of peer-reviewed journals for birds and found that the bias was also present there. “The birds that are featured on the journal covers had higher appeal than those in the rest of the dataset,” Fischer said.

Finally, the researchers wanted to see if the names of birds affected whether researchers studied the birds. They examined bird names, separating out those named after humans, like the Cassin’s sparrow (Peucaea cassinii), from the rest. 

“We found that the eponymously named birds—those named after humans—received less than half the research effort than the other species,” Fischer said. The researchers also found that the visual appeal of birds didn’t differ between birds with people’s names and those without. But it’s possible there’s an implicit bias in the decision to name a species, say, the magnificent riflebird (Ptiloris magnificus) rather than just Vaux’s swift (Chaetura vauxi).

In any case, the take-home message is that wide-ranging species that are more visually appealing and closer to many universities may ultimately get more research, and as a consequence, more conservation and management funding. In some cases, a bird’s drabness and distance from universities may ultimately mean that researchers don’t even know whether its populations are declining and in need of protection.