Scientists say current emojis don't adequately represent 'tree of life'

Emojis are a significant part of our day-to-day texting but they are lacking something - most species, and scientists are not happy about it. In an analysis published on Monday (Dec 11), researchers found that the current emoji library doesn’t accurately represent the “tree of life”, including the breadth of biodiversity seen in nature and it may be affecting conservation efforts.

In the analysis published in the journal iScience, a team of conservation biologists indicated that in our increasingly digitised society, we should not underestimate the power of emojis to raise awareness.

Power of emojis

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The researchers from the University of Milan found that the current emoji catalogue is not diverse enough when it comes to plants, fungi, and microorganisms, but animals are represented fairly well.

The team analysed emojis related to nature and animals available in Emojipedia, a curated online catalogue of emojis, and tracked the changes between 2015 and 2022. They then assessed how emojis changed in this period to determine whether the library is actually evolving to better represent biodiversity in the real world.

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“While the biodiversity crisis may seem distant from the online world, in our increasingly digitized society, we should not underestimate the potential of emojis to raise awareness and foster appreciation for the diversity of life on Earth,” conservation biologists Stefano Mammola, Mattia Falaschi, and Gentile Francesco Ficetola wrote.

“The development and maintenance of diverse and inclusive emoji sets are crucial to ensure the equitable representation of the tree of life in digital communication tools and to effectively convey messages on the importance of all the organisms for the functioning of the biosphere,” they added.

Notably, the emojis to be used by people across the worldare reportedly decided by the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.

What did they find?

Following the categorisation of every tiny icon related to nature and animals, researchers found that there are a total of 112 emojis of distinct organisms – animals (92), plants (16), one fungus, and one microorganism.

The researchers noted how animals are over-represented in the emoji catalogue, while arthropods were under-represented compared to their actual biodiversity.

“Such strong taxonomic bias is in line with current societal awareness of biodiversity, which tends to prioritize animals over other taxa,” the conservation biologists wrote.

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Furthermore, the library is also heavily biased toward vertebrates which include mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and bony fish making up 76 per cent of animal emojis, while only 16 per cent represented arthropods.

To put this into perspective, there are reportedly 1,302,809 described species of arthropod and only 85,423 described species of vertebrate.

The researchers also pointed out how there are no emojis for platyhelminthes (flatworms) or nematodes – despite there being more than 20,000 platyhelminth species and almost 20,000 nematode species.

An ever-updating catalogue would help people “discuss a range of biodiversity-related topics and sentiments more effectively, beyond the icons depicting iconic species,” said the researchers.

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The process of choosing which emojis should be created also plays a role in this lack of representation, researchers noted, since potential emoji subjects usually need to be Googled with a certain frequency, which is not the case with many unrepresented organisms.

“This rule can be problematic, as it risks hampering the extension of emojis in order to better cover the actual biodiversity of our planet,” the researchers wrote.

(With inputs from agencies)