The Washington Post features Ohio State research on attitudes toward animals in the article, “Americans love animals more than they used to – even the ‘scary’ ones.” The news article reports on study findings recently published in the scientific journal Biological Conservation that compares attitudes amongst Americans toward animals across two time periods. The published scientific article is co-authored by faculty and graduate students in the School of Environment and Natural Resources and Department of Animal Sciences at The Ohio State University.
The study found that attitudes across species were remarkably similar in 1978 and 2014; however, attitudes toward eight species exhibited substantive differences. Americans have enduring positive feelings for dogs and cats, but the authors also found that Americans today feel “significantly more positive” about bats, sharks, vultures, wolves and coyotes than they did in 1978. The authors conclude that these changing attitudes could have implications for conservation efforts and policy.