Google Trends (GT) for pangolins (green) compared with three large, well-known, ‘charismatic’ species – tigers (red), elephants (black) and lions (blue), 2005–2016. Data shown are relative search volume, where 100 represents the peak and all other values, for all species, are relative to the peak. Note the very low search volume for pangolins, relative to the other species; the highest relative search volume occurs in July 2015, coinciding with the shooting of Cecil the lion (Macdonald et al. 2016, see text).