Earth is teeming with millions of fungi species, yet the official emoji library offers only one – the Amanita muscaria, the iconic red-capped, white-spotted mushroom found in fairy tale picture books and the Super Mario Brothers games.
Despite a staggering 180,000 species of butterflies and moths on our planet, their single emoji representation is a generic blue butterfly, which looks more like a spring break tattoo than an accurate portrayal of their diversity. These disparities in emoji representation reflect a broader biodiversity crisis in our digital communication.
A team of ecologists have conducted a comprehensive survey of Emojipedia, the global directory of pictograms recognized by the international Unicode Standard, revealing the scarcity of emoji avatars for a wide range of organisms. Their study suggests that a more expansive emoji library could enable more effective communication and advocacy for the protection of Earth’s diverse flora and fauna.
Ecologist Stefano Mammola, one of the co-authors of the report, emphasized the importance of engaging society in the conservation of biodiversity through effective communication, which includes the use of emojis.
Published in the journal iScience, the authors’ report identifies 112 distinct types of living organisms among the 214 images in the “Animals and Nature” section of Emojipedia. The study reveals significant gaps in emoji representation for trees, single-celled organisms, and various animal phyla, indicating a limited scope of natural world representation through emojis.
The authors, who typically focus on real-world specimens, are calling for an expanded and more accurate emoji library to address the biodiversity crisis and enable richer digital conversations about the natural world.