Attitudes and activities related to urban wildlife: Pet owners and non-owners

Tunnicliffe

2008

172

142

Knowledge of animals may influence children"s beliefs and behaviour toward them, thus building positive attitudes toward animals is one of main goals of environmental education programmes. Although keeping animals contributes to the increase of children"s positive attitudes toward wild animals, pet owners show similar negative attitudes toward less popular animals such as insects, bats or rats than non-pet owners. Moreover, some of these animals are emblazoned with various myths (hereafter alternative conceptions) which may have a negative impact on children"s attitudes toward them. We used a novel approach with two questionnaires with nearly identical items for identifying attitudes to bats and spiders in a sample of primary school participants (N = 196) aged 10 -16 years. Score from each questionnaire was factor analysed and then compared with a pair-wise statistic. Children (especially girls) showed more negative attitudes toward spiders in comparison with bats. Both knowledge and alternative conceptions were distributed randomly irrespective of children"s age or gender. We found a moderate, but significant correlation between alternative conceptions and attitudes, whereas more alternative conceptions resulted in more negative attitudes. Interestingly, the link between attitude and knowledge was found just for bats, but not for spiders perhaps due to greater fear from spiders. Implications of the study for the science education practise are discussed.

Section: Myths and Attitudes To Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Disgusting” Animals: Primary School Children’s Attitudes and Myths of Bats and Spiders

Tunnicliffe

2008

172

142

“…Although lower preferences for harmful animals in females are well documented (e.g., Almeida et al, 2014;Bjerke & Østdahl, 2003;Borgi & Cirulli, 2015;, 2013aProkop et al, 2010a,b), no differences were found in reaction times or in identification skills between genders. At first glance, it would seem that the null difference appeared because there were no significant differences in vulnerability to diseases among these young children.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…These animals always receive low preferences from people (Almeida et al, 2014;Arrindell, 2000;Bennett-Levy & Marteau, 1984;Bjerke & Østdahl, 2003;Driscoll, 1995;Schlegel & Rupf, 2010). These preferences can be seen amongst kindergarten children (Borgi & Cirulli, 2015) suggesting that the predisposition to have a negative attitude to invertebrates emerges early in childhood.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Females generally have less positive attitudes toward harmful or disgusting animals than males (Bjerke & Østdahl, 2003;Jimenez & Lindemann-Matthies 2015;Lindemann-Matthies 2005;Prokop et al, 2009aProkop et al, ,b, 2010aProkop & Tunnicliffe, 2010). The rationale for these differences could stem from greater vulnerability to physical harm in females, who are less able to escape and/or defend themselves against predators , 2013aRøskaft et al 2003;Treves-Naughton Treves 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Natural Selection Influences the Reactions of Children to Potentially Dangerous Animals

2018

Certain animals have represented a danger to humans in terms of a predation and pathogen threat over our evolutionary history. It is therefore adaptive for people to respond to a potential threat faster than to harmless events. Using simple choice tasks, the reaction time of children to predators, disease carriers and aposematically coloured animals were investigated. Children reacted the fastest to predators, followed by disease carriers and finally aposematically coloured animals. Furthermore, children manifested the highest accuracy when distinguishing predators from non-predators, followed by disease carriers and harmless animals, with the most errors occurring when identifying the aposematically coloured from non-aposematically coloured animals. Importantly, children more vulnerable to infectious diseases responded to disease carriers faster than healthier children. These results suggest that children are skilled in distinguishing potential danger from non-danger and that the behavioural immune system influences reaction times in visual contact with the pathogen threat.

“…These delicate relationships, however, could easily be broken due to negative experiences with invertebrates 722 (Schonfelder and Bogner, 2017;Silva and Minor, 2017) and elicit disgust which inhibits intrinsic motivation (Randler et al, 2013). This is particularly important when considering females who are more disgust sensitive than males (e.g., Curtis et al, 2004;Oaten et al, 2009, Prokop andFančovičová, 2010) and dislike unpopular animals more than males (Bjerke, Østdahl, and Kleiven, 2003;Jimenez and Lindemann-Matthies, 2015;Lindemann-Matthie, 2005;Prokop et al, 2009a;Prokop et al, 2009b;Prokop and Tunnicliffe, 2010;Prokop and Fančovičová, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Hands-on Activities on Conservation, Disgust and Knowledge of Woodlice

Fančovičová

2017

Although hands-on activities significantly improve achievement and attitudes toward animals, the use of the aesthetically unpleasant is questionable. We investigated whether the use of woodlouse, as an example of an unpopular animal, alters children's conservation attitudes, disgust for and knowledge of woodlice. The experimental group (n = 116), but not the control group (n = 110), achieved a better woodlouse conservation score with hands-on activities, but the intentions for woodlouse conservation were not generalized for conserving other animals. Disgust for woodlice was not influenced by the treatment, but females, albeit more disgust sensitive than men, showed higher conservation scores than men. Woodlouse knowledge scores significantly increased in both groups. In summary, this study demonstrates both the benefits and limits of using animals which are aesthetically unpopular, but essential parts of biodiversity and food chains.