title: Being attractive brings advantages: the case of parrot species in captivity.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Parrots are one of the most frequently kept and bred bird orders in captivity. This increases poaching and thus the potential importance of captive populations for rescue programmes managed by zoos and related institutions. Both captive breeding and poaching are selective and may be influenced by the attractiveness of particular species to humans. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that the size of zoo populations is not only determined by conservation needs, but also by the perceived beauty of individual parrot species assessed by human observers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For the purpose of data collection, we defined four sets of species (40 parrots, 367 parrots, 34 amazons, 17 macaws). Then, we asked 776 human respondents to evaluate parrot pictures of the selected species according to perceived beauty and we analyzed its association with color and morphological characters. Irrespective of the species set, we found a good agreement among the respondents. The preferred species tended to be large, colorful, and long-tailed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We repeatedly confirmed significant, positive association between the perceived beauty and the size of worldwide zoo population. Moreover, the range size and body size appeared to be significant predictors of zoo population size. In contrast, the effects of other explanatory variables, including the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) listing, appeared insignificant. Our results may suggest that zoos preferentially keep beautiful parrots and pay less attention to conservation needs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, Faculty of Sciences, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic. frynta@centrum.cz
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Frynta
authors.forename: Silvie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lisková
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bültmann
authors.forename: Hynek
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Burda
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D000836:Animals, Zoo / Q000502:physiology; D001504:Beauty; D001947:Breeding; D056727:Endangered Species; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010311:Parrots / Q000502:physiology*; D011157:Population Dynamics; D055815:Young Adult