What baby mammal isn't likable?
"‘It’s a PR thing,’ said the Dragon, half to itself.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s a public relations thing,’ he said again, opening his eyes and staring at me. ‘Why do people spend millions trying to save dolphins, yet eat tuna by the bucketful Isn’t that what you were thinking of?’
‘You can read my thoughts?’
‘Only when someone feels passionately about something. Ordinary thoughts are pretty dull. Powerful ideas have a life of their own, they carry on, unshakeable, from person to person. Wouldn’t you agree?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, but carried on. ‘Elephants, gorillas, Buzonjis, dolphins, snowleopards, Shridloos, tigers, lions, cheetahs, whales, seals, manatees, orang-utans, pandas -what have all these got in common?’
‘They’re all endangered.’
‘Apart from that.’
‘They’re all pretty big?’ I hazarded.
‘They’re all mammals,’ said Maltcassion contemptuously. ‘You seem to be making this planet into an exclusive mammals-only club. If seal cubs were as ugly as the average reptile, I wonder if you’d bother with them at all. But those big eyes and the cute barking and the soft fur, well, they just melt your little mammalian heart, don’t they?’
‘There are other non-mammals that are protected,’ I argued, but Maltcassion wasn’t impressed.
‘Window dressing, nothing more. No one much cares about the reptiles, bugs or fishes, unless, of course, they look nice. Seems a pretty crummy method of selecting species for survival, doesn’t it to you? If you want to redress your overtly mammal supremacist attitudes, I should ban the words “cuddly”, “cute” and “fluffy”, for a start.’"
From The Last Dragonslayer, by Jasper Fforde