“Pokemon ‘creatures’ are far more recognisable to the average eight-year-old than British animals and plants,” Ananova reports.
“A study found that children were better able to identify characters from the Japanese card trading game than their own native species.
“They were more likely to remember names like pikachu, metapod, muk and wigglytuff than mouse, otter, beetle and oak tree”:
Researchers surveyed a total of 109 children aged four to 11 from two primary schools in Cambridgeshire. Each was asked to identify from picture cards 10 types of British wildlife drawn randomly from a set of 100. They were also asked to name 10 Pokemon “species” taken from 100 different character types.
[…]For wildlife, average success at getting the right answers rose from 32% at age four to 53% at age eight and then fell slightly. But for Pokemon characters, the success rate rose from 7% at four to 78% by eight.
Children aged eight and over typically identified Pokemon characters far more easily than animals and plants.
Dr Tim Coulson, from the Department of Zoology at Cambridge University, one of the research team, said: ‘The reason we decided to do this research is that from various children we knew we were getting the impression that their knowledge of local wildlife wasn’t very good.
‘I was more disappointed than surprised. I think it’s a shame that eight-year-olds seem to be less knowledgable about British wildlife than they are about Pokemon characters.
‘The real message is that conservation biologists are really missing a trick. The inventors of Pokemon have realised that children love creatures and collecting pictures of creatures, and they’ve tapped into that.’
Amusing? Sad? Ironic? Predictable? I can’t decide, really…
Well, their ignorance no doubt stems from the sort of literature and entertainment kids are fed these days. We grew up on cartoons that featured real (if cartoonized) animals like coyotes, rabbits, skunks, mice, etc.—today kids have things like Pokemon, which has completely fantastical creatures as characters.
I also noticed they only sampled two schools in an urban area. Where do they get the idea that this consitutes a good basis for establishing an “average?” I mean, I sucked at statistics, but even I know better than that.
…I’m leaning towards this being “amusing.” Kids clearly are still capable of memorizing entire mythologies and their inhabitants—and this allows them to use their imaginations. There’s nothing wrong with real animals, naturally. But this just seems to suggest teachers should be doing a better job of teaching, because kids are doing a fine job of learning what they’re interested in learning.
Ummm… You mean Pikachu isn’t a real animal? Are you like totally sure?
Okay, alright, I can live with that. But Charizard is real, right? Right? Hello…?
Myria
My friends and I use to trade little baseball like cards of zoo animals (and as I recall baseball cards of famous presidents) and that was a really good learning trick…who the animal was and the vitals. (All right so I was [and am] a little weird.)
And as far as the meal: I’ll have that black and white thing with the long nose…what did you call it a Badger…in the cream sauce…tastes like that one bird that clucks a lot…what do call that chicken I think?
No wonder why biological literacy in children plunges – because they get caught up in Pokemon rather than Zoobooks! A lizard, for example, is not the same as Charmander because it does not use fire powers or speak syllables or the entirety of its name!
The lesson learned? Read more books. ‘Nuff said.