The Bank of England has announced the results of a public vote on which four animal species should feature on the back of future banknotes to replace long-dead ‘famous’ people.
In a strange electoral process there were three categories of animal species (perhaps the strangest aspect was that there were no plants and no fungi); mammals, birds and ‘everything else’. The results were somewhat interesting:
The Buff-tailed Bumblebee was the most popular species (although had it been included in the ballot we can be pretty sure that the incredibly similar-looking White-tailed Bumblebee would have split the vote) presumably because lots of people, including me, thought that of the 18 species on offer, I should vote for one of the two insects offered and chose a species that I see regularly over one I haven’t seen for years. As in other elections, you can only choose between the species on the ballot paper.
There are around 75,000 UK species and once the 15,000 fungi, 7,000 flowering plants, 2,000 lichens, 8,000 protists and a few other small groups are removed from the ballot that leaves, roughly, 42,000 animals, of which about 100 are mammals and 600 are birds. The whole process favours the establishment classes of birds and mammals but any resemblance to how democracy works in the UK is entirely accidental (or ingrained?).
Once the public has had its say in the three categories offered, the Bank of England has selected another species, the Puffin, to add to the list, apparently to represent marine species. Puffin was 6th on the list of 18 species.
I was wondering how you would vote, so here is a link to a very simple and anonymous survey – click here – where I ask you to vote for one of the six mammals, one of the six birds and one of the six ‘animals that aren’t birds or mammals’ just like the original survey BUT ALSO simply for the one species from the 18 on offer that you would choose. I’ll be interested in the results.
[registration_form]