Do Wild Animal Videos Drive Meaningful Conservation Action?

Around the world, biodiversity is declining largely because of human activity. Strong public policy is essential to address the crisis. This, in turn, depends on understanding how people value conservation and wildlife in the first place.

Social media offers a powerful window into public attitudes. It allows us to see how people engage with nature-related content and gives creators the opportunity to influence public opinion at scale. Millions of people spend hours each day on platforms like YouTube, and research is beginning to reveal how influential it can be. For example, we’ve seen that viewing nature-related content can strengthen positive attitudes towards wild animals. However, whether this leads to actual support for conservation remains unknown.

This study focuses specifically on YouTube, one of the largest platforms for wildlife content in the world. Despite its size and influence, relatively few applied studies have examined how wild animal videos shape public engagement. Analyzing such a large volume of videos and comments presents methodological challenges, but with the right tools, YouTube offers valuable insights into public perceptions of wildlife.

Researchers examined 1,751 videos featuring wild animals, along with 24,917 comments. Combining human-guided coding with machine learning, they categorized video themes, measured engagement via views, likes, and comments, and explored audience reactions through comment content. Specifically, they looked at:

• Appreciation for wild animals or humans (e.g., expressions of reverence for their beauty or abilities)
• Concern for wild animals or humans (e.g., expressions of worry, distress, or fear for their welfare)
• Calls to action (e.g., “Contact your senator,” “We should do something about these wolves”)

The results showed that hunting was the most common theme (17%), followed by animals in captivity such as zoos or reserves (15%). This indicates that most wildlife content on the platform shows animals in human-centered contexts. The next most common themes included wildlife viewing in natural settings (14%), national parks (9%), safaris (7%), conservation (6%), and educational content (6%).

Educational, animals in captivity, and conservation videos had the most comments per video (an average of 20, 19, and 14, respectively), suggesting higher interaction. Safari, animals in captivity, and educational videos had the highest views (an average of 2.9, 2.3, and 1.8 million, respectively), while captivity-related, educational, and conservation content received the most likes (an average of 23,730, 11,550, and 8,650, respectively). This reveals an audience preference for passive viewing versus more active engagement through liking or commenting.

Most comments expressed appreciation for wild animals (32%), followed by appreciation for humans (23%). Expressions of concern for wild animals appeared in 7% of comments and concern for humans in none. Calls to action were rare — found in just 2% of comments. Importantly, concern and calls to action for wild animals were more common in response to conservation-themed videos. Still, overall engagement was dominated by admiration rather than advocacy.

It’s important to note that non-English comments were excluded from analysis and videos from places where YouTube isn’t available, such as China, weren’t represented. This limits global generalizability. While researchers were able to identify when viewers made calls to action in the comments, they didn’t examine whether those comments were directly influenced by the videos themselves (e.g., whether creators urged viewers to donate or get involved). Coders noticed instances of this when reviewing the videos manually, but machine learning efforts to classify these weren’t reliable enough to use in the model.

In conclusion, YouTube is a primary platform for engagement with wildlife, but the type of engagement makes conservation efforts difficult. Simple exposure to nature-related videos doesn’t translate into conservation calls to action or advocacy.

Still, the findings highlight an opportunity: calls to action were more likely to appear in response to conservation-focused videos. Content highlighting animal welfare issues or controversial topics such as wolf reintroduction was more likely to spark advocacy than videos simply showcasing beautiful wildlife. This suggests that conservation organizations have room to grow their presence on YouTube. Future efforts should focus on making this content more effective on social media. This could include using algorithms to help conservation videos reach more people, creating more emotionally compelling and story-driven content, and encouraging conversations that inspire real civic action. The goal is to move people beyond “clicktivism” towards more meaningful action.

It’s clear that digital platforms have enormous potential. The challenge now is learning how to transform admiration for wild animals into advocacy.