Your phone’s emoji library is incomplete. Here’s what’s missing.
Dino Grandoni
Hey! How was camping?
Kasha Patel
Great! Saw 🐻, 🐦, and 🔥+✈️!
Dino Grandoni
🔥+✈️?? Fireflies?
Kasha Patel
Yeah, I couldn’t find an emoji for it 😥
Butterflies, beavers, panda bears — open your phone and you’ll find all sorts of cute and cuddly creatures in the library of emojis you can text your friends. In total, there are over 110 distinct plants, animals and other species with official icons to choose from.
But some organisms are missing. Their absence tells us a whole lot about how we humans see the natural world around us.
When researchers analyzed the official list of nature-related emojis recognized by the Unicode Consortium, the global standard-bearer for the pictograms, they found a striking mismatch between the emoji options on our phones and the diversity of life on Earth.
“Many people saw this as trivial research probably, which is true,” said Stefano Mammola, an ecologist at the National Research Council in Italy who co-wrote a December paper in the journal iScience.
But having the right communication tools at their disposal helps biologists like him get the message out about species threatened with extinction, he added.
“For conservation biology to work,” he said, “we need to be able to communicate.”
So The Washington Post decided to fill in the gaps — and create eight emojis of our own.
Invertebrate injustice
Traditionally, all life can be placed in one of six or so different kingdoms. (Biologists still cannot agree on how many kingdoms of life there are.) But only two of them — plants and animals — have any significant presence in the emoji library.
All single-cell organisms are represented by a lone, nondescript “microbe” emoji (🦠). Seemingly missing are tiny organisms called protists, a diverse and predominantly unicellular group.
Like animals and plants, protists have a nucleus containing DNA (whereas single-celled bacteria do not). They are crucial to many ecosystems, sitting at the base of food chains and eaten by large microorganisms, insect larvae and fish.
Protist
Fun fact: One type of parasitic protist caused the historic Irish potato famine in the mid-19th century. Another is responsible for malaria.
The fungus kingdom has one measly mushroom emoji (🍄). There is no mold, for example, despite its prevalence in the environment (and in many people’s basements).
Some molds make people sick. But others play an important role in nature by breaking down fallen leaves and other organic matter, returning nutrients to the environment.
Mold
Fun fact: Molds come in many colors and shapes — furry splotches, dark stains or colorful specks of orange or green.
Animal anomalies
Looking at the animal kingdom, there is a huge bias toward the large group, or phylum, we are in — vertebrates. Out of more than 30 animal phyla, we only have emoji representatives for five of them.
There are a handful of mollusks (🐌), arthropods (🕷️) and worms (🪱). But there are no echinoderms — that is, sea stars and their relatives.
Sea stars, also known as starfish, are a keystone species — meaning removing the invertebrates can upend an entire ecosystem. The crash in starfish off the West Coast, for instance, allowed the sea urchins upon which they preyed to destroy huge underwater kelp jungles.
Starfish
Fun fact: Sea stars, which are not technically fish, do not have five arms but are actually mostly head.
Nor are there any tardigrades, or water bears — a group of extremely hardy, eight-legged animals.
These microscopic creatures are like the superheroes of the animal kingdom, capable of surviving extreme conditions that would kill many other animals — like environments found in the deep sea, polar regions and even space. Scientists study water bears to learn how to protect humans in extreme conditions.
Water bear
Fun fact: Water bears have been on Earth for about 600 million years, surviving all five mass extinctions.
Bias against bugs
Scrolling through the emojis on your phone may lead you to believe that most animals are vertebrates. Over three-fourths of all available animal emojis are mammals (🐘), birds (🐦), reptiles (🦎), amphibians (🐸) or fish (🐟).
But in reality, the vast majority of animal species — a whopping 85 percent — are arthropods, such as insects (🐜), spiders (🕷️) and crustaceans (🦞).
Among the missing creepy-crawly things are two making their presence loudly and brightly known this summer: cicadas and fireflies.
When it comes to the latter, many fireflies are at risk of extinction. With hundreds of thousands of plants and animals threatened with vanishing IRL, fretting about smartphone icons may seem unimportant.
But to raise charitable funds or build political support for protecting endangered species, conservationists have to convince the general public that a creature is worth saving. Today, much of that advocacy happens online.
“If it’s true — and I’m not sure — that communication plays a key role in promoting biodiversity conservation,” ecologist Mammola said, then “having the possibility to express biodiversity concepts with a simple image, it’s a nice thing.”
Which emojis end up in the official library is decided by the Unicode Consortium, a California-based nonprofit organization that acts as a sort of international tribunal on which emojis get added to Apple, Google, Meta and other platforms.
Anyone can submit a suggestion to the consortium for a new emoji. But the group warns that only “a small fraction” of proposals are accepted. Among the criteria the committee uses to evaluate the emoji wannabes is originality, likelihood for widespread usage and ability to be used in a sequence with other emojis.
Firefly
Fun fact: Fireflies flicker to find mates. Scientists have used their bioluminescent chemicals to develop antibiotics and test chemotherapies for treating cancer.
Although loud and annoying, cicadas are good to the environment. When they emerge from underground, their burrowed holes help aerate lawns and improve water filtration. And their big broods are a veritable feast for birds and other predators.
Cicada
Fun fact: Cicadas most likely emerge from underground sparingly and in masses as a tactic to avoid predators.
Amphibian advocacy
Even among backboned creatures, the emoji library is off. Mammals and birds are overrepresented compared with fish and reptiles.
And there’s just one amphibian emoji — 🐸. There is no axolotl, for instance, despite its popularity online and as a pet.
Kids love axolotls for their creepy-cute smile. Adult scientists like them, too — especially for studying their ability to regenerate a damaged limb, heart and even brain tissue.
Axolotl
Fun fact: The axolotl made its debut on Mexico’s 50-peso bill in 2021.
Today, axolotls are critically endangered due to human development and invasive species, with their numbers dwindling in their only remaining natural habitat in the wetlands of Mexico City.
Rave for rodents
Looking through your phone, you can find chipmunks (🐿️), mice (🐁) and rats (🐀). But few would realize when looking at the emoji library that 40 percent of all mammals species on Earth are rodents.
Among the missing is the capybara, Earth’s largest living rodent.
Native to South America, capybaras play an important part in managing environments as they snack on grasses, fruits and aquatic plants. The paths they create in grasses help control water flow and create ecological niches for other animals.
Capybara
Fun fact: Capybaras regularly eat their poop to absorb nutrients they missed the first time.
The Post has created only eight emojis — a fraction of the planet’s overall biodiversity missing from your phone. Which of them would you use the most?
About this story
Design and development by Hailey Haymond. Art direction by Emily Sabens. Editing by Ana Campoy and Joe Moore. Copy editing by Melissa Ngo.