Misleading vividness

Biological Parallel

Shark attacks kill ~10 humans globally per year; lightning kills 24,000 and drowning kills 236,000—yet sharks dominate beach safety discussions. The vivid predator hijacks attention from statistical reality. Ecosystems face the same bias: charismatic megafauna (pandas, tigers) attract 80% of conservation funding while invertebrate pollinators provide $577 billion annually in ecosystem services but receive <5% of conservation resources. Alarm calls evolved to draw attention to vivid threats (predators) not statistical ones (parasites, disease). Vervet monkeys have distinct alarm calls for leopards (vivid, dramatic) versus snakes (equally deadly, less salient)—both trigger escape, but leopard alarms generate stronger troop-wide responses. Aposematic signaling (bright warning colors in poison dart frogs) weaponizes vividness—making rare encounters memorable enough to shape predator behavior across populations. Evolution designed attention for salience, not statistics. Vivid = memorable = overweighted. The most dangerous threats are often invisible—pathogens kill more than predators, but predators dominate fear responses.