[sethammons]

Donors. They want something that makes them feel good. Something to talk about at a cocktail party. LCM: large charismatic mammal; I'm saving pandas is better than the parasitic anderson wasp* that lives out its lifecycle in some gross fungus thing

*imaginary bug

[vibrio]

Your point is well taken that pandas are probably a quick pitch for the right crowd, but “lots of money” seems optimistic for wildlife/conservation biology funding. That said, raising money for diseases of __human__ inhabitants of the developing world is typically quite a challenge. Counter to the focus of this thread, obesity is where it’s at right now for abundant funding.