Jerry Moore

I think that cats fall into this category of what we think of as charismatic species.

And this is a term that comes out of wildlife biology for animals, and in some cases plants, that seem to really attract human attention.

And so these are the animals that show up on your advertisements for World Wildlife Fund or for your local zoos and things like that.

It turns out that they don't put tapeworms up there as their icons.

They put up animals that are charismatic.

And there's been a lot of research on this by advertisers and others, and we know what the top 20 charismatic species are.

And of the top 10, I think it's four are different varieties of cats, lions, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, et cetera.

And as well as elephants and things like that.

And what's really interesting is that when we go back and look at cave art that was made 15 to 20,000 years ago and painted on the walls of caves in Europe during the Paleolithic, like at Chauvet Cave,

The animals that are depicted there are not just some random depiction of animals that ancient peoples ran into.

They are the same charismatic species.

They are cave lions.

They are cave bears.

They're mammoths.

They're rhinoceri.

And it's really interesting to see that kind of continuity between someone who's making cave art in the Upper Paleolithic

And a modern designer who's saying, okay, who would be a good animal character for the next Disney cartoon?

And they're likely to choose the same charismatic animals.

Right.

And, you know, I've often toyed with the idea.