How amusing memes in social media can raise concern for an ugly species

There is limited knowledge of the mechanisms that can inspire people’s concern and engagement in the protection of unpopular and unappealing species. Our study analyses the phenomenon of people’s interest in themed internet memes featuring the proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) in Poland and its consequences from the viewpoint of conservationists. We have found that photos of the proboscis monkey, if presented with humour in internet memes, can attract just as much attention and gain interest as typical popular species used in marketing by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). We employed five tools to estimate the interest in the proboscis monkey in Poland: Google Trends, Google Search, Google Search restricted to results with images, social media (Facebook), and inspection of published press articles. We present evidence for correlations between amusing internet memes spread by social media and increasing interest in unappealing, "ugly" species. Moreover, the interest in amusing internet memes correlated with the individual decision making to donate crowdfunding actions. Thus, novel methods of conservation marketing that include amusing memes and social media might be of great interest as they seem to be complementary to the existing methods and are likely to influence individuals unaffected by traditional conservation campaigns