A Tale of Two Cats: Media

For tens of thousands of years, humans have captured the beauty of big cats through art. From the 32,000-year-old Chauvet Cave lion paintings to the millions of cat photos shared across the internet every day, our feline friends are no strangers to human admiration. Up until the spread of Western colonial hunting, big cats’ depiction in art and media had little impact on their lived experience in the wild. Today that could not be farther from the truth, as the role of media has shifted into the driver's seat. For some cats, social media has pushed false narratives and encouraged hunting, a desire for captive photo interactions, and even revenge kills in response to livestock casualties. While for other cats, the widespread sharing of photography and video has become the most important line of defense between them and extinction.

Chauvet Cave lion paintings in Southern France Source: Bradshaw Foundation

Tigers and cougars are perhaps the best pairing of cats to cover the spectrum of how social media impacts big cats today. Tigers have become the face of global conservation and the subject of international adoration. As one of the most famous endangered animals, their story has been shared across the world and generates millions of dollars in donations every year. On the other hand, cougars have had a different experience with modern media. As one of the least documented big cats in the world, cougars have lived up to their moniker, “Ghost Cats,” and avoided the spotlight. Their most frequent appearances in the news are usually the result of human-cougar conflict, often leading to fear mongering and calls to kill any cats in question. 

As with many aspects of the relationship between big cats and human society, the path to where we are today has been anything but straightforward. In order to get a clearer picture of how social media has evolved to play such a significant role in the lives of big cats, we first need take a step back and consider the larger field of wildlife media.

Wildlife Media

The term “Wildlife Media” is admittedly broad. A hobbyist sketching pigeons in Central Park, a multimillion dollar wildlife documentary, the famous works of Henry David Thoreau penned on the banks of Walden Pond - these are just three of the countless ways people document the robust natural world around us. When discussing wildlife media in the context of impacting the frontlines of conservation and land management, the most relevant area is typically mass communication. This would include high-budget films, large scale advertising campaigns, and the ever-growing sphere of social media. While other mediums of expression play their own distinct roles, these three sectors have reached a scale that enables them to directly influence political and economic decisions that shape our natural world in the 21st century. 

Poster for BBC Planet Earth, one of the most popular wildlife documentary-series ever Source: BBC

At the core of the wildlife media world lies an undeniable truth; it is a business. While this industry is certainly driven by more altruism than most - profits, results, and money have maintained their seat at the table. This identity has shaped the field so that attention is allocated to the stories that generate the most excitement, rather than those that might need the most help. Unsurprisingly, this has led to sensationalization often eclipsing unbiased journalism as the most prominent style of storytelling. Hit Netflix docu-series Tiger King is the most recent example of Hollywood-esque drama making its way into the animal documentary space. Reputable institutions such as National Geographic and BBC have tried to stay away from overdramatized reporting, but even these media moguls are guilty of favoring charismatic species when it comes to airtime. Whether this is irresponsible wildlife coverage or just an optimal approach for a media organization is a discussion for another article. The bottom line is wildlife media disproportionately covers the public’s favorite animals. The result of this, as you might imagine, has direct implications on conservation tactics, government policy, and economic investment around the natural world. 

The Social Cats

In general, people love big cats. They are undeniably stars of the animal kingdom and have piqued human interest for millennia. In years gone by, mighty emperors displayed exotic cat pelts in royal courts and authors wrote harrowing tales of encounters with these beasts. Today, society is just as infatuated with these cats. The Lion King (2019) became the highest grossing animated film ever. Tiger King (2020) broke the record for the most watched series on Netflix. Every year, wildlife tourism, an industry led by big cat safaris, generates around $350 billion for the global economy. The pop-culture and economic trends of the 21st century provide all the evidence needed to show big cats have remained a fascination for modern society.

Despite big cats' overwhelming admiration, not all cats are treated equally. A survey spanning 73 countries and over 50,000 respondents found tigers hold the title of the world’s favorite animal, with lions following close behind on the list. While a popularity contest amongst wildlife may seem silly, the implications of these public preferences translate into very real impacts on media representation and conservation efforts. Those working on cougar preservation and management are quite familiar with this disparity in public attention. Unlike many of their feline relatives, mountain lions have relatively little social media presence and comparatively small financial support from the global community.

One of the best proxies for media coverage is searching related posts across Facebook platforms including Instagram, the most popular dedicated photo sharing app in the world. In efforts to illustrate the disparity in public attention given to each cat, I filtered posts on Facebook platforms by hashtags relevant to each cat. Immediately, I could see a significant difference between cats, with Lions and Tigers leading the group. However, with general hashtags like #tiger, #lion, and #cougar I found the posts were frequently unrelated to the cats - Tiger Woods, the Detroit Lions, and another definition of the term “cougar” led to mixed results. Given that I am focused on how social media interplays with conservation, I found the two most popular hashtag formulas that removed distracting posts and pertained directly to the cats: #[CatName]Conservation and #SaveThe[CatName]. The results of these searches painted an accurate but shocking picture of just how skewed social media is towards its favorite cats. 

Number of Facebook/Instagram Posts within Hashtags Relevant to the Seven Primary Big Cat Species 

Six of the seven large cats saw relatively similar ratios between one another as compared to the original search terms. However, unlike the first grouping of hashtags, the dedicated conservation terms had one clear outlier - cougars. The ghost cats have well below even one percent of the posts dedicated to tigers, and average one mention for every 321 posts for tigers. 

Number of Facebook/Instagram Posts within the #[CatName]Conservation Hashtag

Despite the shocking difference in public attention, one could argue that comparing tigers and cougars in this way is unfair, given that cougars are not globally listed as endangered. While the IUCN endangered label likely impacts the popularity of tigers, this argument cannot be extended to any other cats. Each species on this list contains subspecies that are listed as endangered, such as the Floridian cougar or Amur leopard, but none of the cats other than tigers have received the IUCN title of globally endangered. In the case of leopards and jaguars, both species are estimated to have larger global populations than cougars, despite also having more than ten times the social media coverage regarding their conservation. 

Number of Facebook/Instagram Posts within Hashtags Relevant to the Seven Primary Big Cat Species Adjusted for Species Population

In efforts to paint a clearer picture of how social media attention is distributed by species, I compared total posts under the #[CatName] hashtags to the best estimations of each species’ global population. Once again, tigers rise towards the top, as cougars fall towards the bottom. It is also worth noting the only species below cougars on this list are leopards, who have a deflated post per cat ratio due to an estimated global population over ten times that of cougars. 

Overall the message is clear. Attention on social media is far from equally distributed amongst cats. Across a variety of big cat hashtags, tigers claim a whopping 34% of total posts made while cougars hold onto just under 1%. 

Average Market Share of Posts on Instagram by Big Cat Species

The final metric I used to display the gap between these cats was Google search history. Unlike social media, searches are not impacted by what gets the most likes or shares. Instead, Google searches provide a more individual perspective on what people around the world are taking time to look up on their own volition. 

Google Search History since 2004 for Cougars and Tigers

Unlike Facebook platforms, Google allows you to filter results by relevant topics without finding confounding results. For example, in this comparison the data is only reflecting searches for Tiger (Animal) and Cougar (Animal), while leaving out searches for sports teams or other results linked to each phrase. Since 2004, the ratio between searches for tigers and cougars has been fairly constant at just over 6:1 - meaning cougar related terms are searched around 84% less than tiger related terms. Within this period, there are clear spikes for both terms. The notable 2012 uptick for cougars may be related to Steve Winter’s award-winning photo of an adult cougar in front of the Hollywood sign that headlined the front page of the LA Times. The highest point on the graph for tigers came in early 2020, after the release of Tiger King. Regardless of these temporary fluctuations, the overall narrative is similar to social media in that there is a greater interest for tigers on a global scale.  

Impact of Media

Those outside the wildlife conservation and management communities may be confused why someone would dedicate time to compare the number of likes or posts attributed to different big cats. The answer is simple - in the 21st century, media drives change. In the big cat space, this principle firmly holds true.  While the data on donations to species-specific initiatives within the largest wildlife NGOs remains private, the impacts of media on big cats can be captured anecdotally around the world.  

After National Geographic covered the compelling story of P-22, a male cougar living in the Hollywood hills, Los Angeles saw widespread public support for the Liberty Canyon wildlife crossing. This $87 million land bridge will span ten lanes of a major California freeway and provide a safe route for cougars to avoid traffic. The project has been funded primarily by private donors and is set to break ground in November 2021.

Despite tigers living in captivity in the U.S. for decades, it was only after the release of Tiger King, The Hidden Tiger, and National Geographic’s spotlight article on American tigers that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Big Cat Public Safety Act and multiple roadside zoo owners were finally prosecuted by government officials. 

The Thai government was pushed to fully close all operations at the infamous Tiger Temple after international news agencies and photojournalists prompted global outrage by exposing the horrific abuse, starving, and drugging of tigers in the facility. 

An adult tiger forced to pose with tourists at the infamous Tiger Temple in Thailand Source: The Conservation

The list of positive accomplishments in the world of big cats driven by media coverage is long and thankfully growing quickly. However, there is another side to this coin, one that is less shiny and glamorous. On this side, we find cats who rarely see the limelight, and even worse, are occasionally the victims of negative, anti-conservation media. 

As demonstrated by their lack of representation in wildlife media, mountain lions generally fall into the category of cats that do not experience many of the benefits of social media support. Of course, there are exceptions, such as the story of P-22 above, but these usually occur in California and Florida, the two states where these cats are fully protected. In Texas, on the other hand, the beginning of 2021 came with calls to shoot any cougars on sight after a 28-year old man was killed by an unidentified animal. Despite state wildlife officials confirming there was no evidence of the attack being attributed to a mountain lion, locals were quick to scapegoat the cat and organize civilian led hunts. The narrative of cougars being bloodthirsty and vicious beasts can trace its roots back to the writings of early American hunters, no doubt exaggerating danger to impress their peers. Although data on fatal attacks by cougars show these claims are baseless, their public perception has still not fully recovered.

Mountain lions are not the only species to get the short end of the social media stick. Leopards are another big cat that have struggled in recent years with human-animal conflict and persecution, as locals share false information pertaining to livestock kills and public safety risk over social media. Similar to cougars, leopards also have a community of activists and scientists working to debunk these negative public opinions in efforts to protect the species.

Social Media as a Tool for Conservation

Clearly the relationship between big cats and mass media is complicated. More coverage can be an opportunity to increase financial and political support for the issues that matter most. Unfortunately, the circulation of a negative headline can have exactly the opposite effect, leading to increased hunting and relaxed government protection. In either case, modern media has shown that its influence will continue to play a significant role in the lives, policy, and economics surrounding big cats. With this in mind, it is vitally important that those fighting to create a better world for these cats learn to use media as a tool for conservation and management. Through conscientious coverage of the issues surrounding big cats, the wildlife media community can give these animals a spotlight on the global stage. Together, we can make their voices heard. 

A photo I captured of T-84, one of the famous tigers in Ranthambore National Park Source: Mike McGovern