An incredible 2008 campaign by World Wildlife Fund has resurfaced and is going viral once again thanks to a recent Reddit post.
The campaign, titled WWF Japan – Population by Pixel, shows how close animals are to extinction by how pixelated they are. The images are made up of as many pixels as there are animals left of that particular species.
It was created by agency Hakuhodo C&D / Tokyo and was the brainchild of creative directors Nami Hoshino, Yoshiyuki Mikami, and designer Kazuhiro Mochizuki.
Their powerful work even inspired a follow up project by JJSmooth44, titled Every Pixels. Every Pixels is one animal and the more pixelated the image, the closer it is to extinction.
Sharing their work, JJSmooth44, wrote:
I did it as a programming challenge. I did it in python, but the code is very gross.
I only worried about the final product and not the readability/niceness of the code.
Some of the images are relatively clear to see, such as the chimpanzee, which has between 172,700 and 299,700 still in existence. However, this is a far cry from the likes of the Borneo pygmy elephant, which is impossible to make out with just an estimated 1,500 still in existence.
The collection featured a very grainy image of an African wild dog, which is reported to have just 3,000 and 5,500 remaining and another purely pixelated picture showed an Amur leopard which has just 60 still in existence.
Following was the Amur tiger, in which you can only roughly make out the colours of the animal. The Amur tiger is believed to have just 450 remaining. By comparison, the Asian elephant is relatively clear to see with 40,000 to 50,000 still in existence.
The Bengal tiger can only be made out by the colours, with just 2,500 believed to remain, meanwhile the black-footed ferret is nothing but a brown blur, with just 300 thought to be in existence. The Bonobo has between 10,000 and 50,000 of its kind, while the Bornean orangutan is estimated to have 45,000 and 69,000 remaining.
An image of a black rhino depicts just 5,000 remaining while the blue whale is believed to have 10,000 and 25,000 still in existence.
The collection includes the eastern lowland gorilla (17,000), fin whale (50,000 – 90,000), Galapagos penguin (2,000), giant panda (1,864), green sea turtle (3,000 – 5,500), Hector’s dolphin (7,000), Indian elephant (20,000 – 25,000), Indochinese tiger (600 – 650), Indus River dolphin (1,100) and the Javan rhino (60).
The images show the heartbreaking reality of the plight of some of the world’s most incredible animals.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.