A group of Italian biologists have announced that more images of worms, spiders, fungi and other organisms should be added to the emoji catalog. The analysis of the problem was published in the scientific journal magazine iScience.
“While the biodiversity crisis may seem far away from the online world, we should not underestimate the potential of emoji in our digital society to raise awareness and create understanding of the diversity of life on Earth,” said the report’s authors, Stefano Mammola and Mattia Falaschi. Francesco Fichetola, a non-Jew.
Researchers analyzed the Emojipedia emoji library for images related to nature and animals. It turns out that 76% of all pictograms in this section are represented by mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish.
Arthropods, including insects, spiders and crustaceans, are less diverse, but vertebrates number only 85 thousand, although more than 1.3 million species are known today.
Scientists also noted that there is not a single flatworm or nematode among the emojis, but science has discovered more than 20 thousand different flatworms and almost the same number of nematode varieties.
Biologists added that despite the scarcity of spiders and worms, the biodiversity of existing emoji environments is increasing. For example, in 2020, an image of an ordinary annelid worm appeared in the catalog, and in 2021 a pictogram of red coral was added there.
Previous researchers I learnedWhich emojis are most often sent to each other by employees of Russian companies.