Women like cuddly creatures whilst men like creepy-crawlies, says YouGov
Dogs remain the nation's favourite animal
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Your support makes all the difference.Men and women like quite different animals, according to new research.
According to a silly YouGov analysis that has confirmed long-held suspicions of gender-based animal bias, men like lobsters, alligators and sticklebacks (it's a type of fish) whereas women prefer cats, ponies and miniature pigs.
The country's overall favourites are still predictably pets like dogs and cats, as well as the more exotic tigers and elephants.
But, by declaring their animal preferences via the YouGov website, some of the pollster's 190,000 members have helped reveal that some stereotypes really are true.
Men, whom one classic nursery rhyme claims derive from slugs, snails and puppy-dog tails, have an expressed affection for powerful, strange, and not-traditionally cute creatures.
Slow worms, crayfish, and ants feature on the list of animals loved by one gender but not by the other.
Women, on the other hand, choose cuddly critters like guinea pigs, hedgehogs and panda bears.
Besides the butterfly and the penguin, every one of the female-preferred is a mammal.
What's in a number?
This poll is actually more complex than many of the higher-brow studies which YouGov regularly releases; that's because of something called the Z-score.
YouGov explained: "For each preference by members of a given group, we find what is known in statistics as the Z-score.
"This is a measure of what is particularly true of the people in that group. Basically, it is how the attitudes and opinions of a particular group differ from the national average and how great the strength of that difference is."
The Z-score for the animals preferred by women are much stronger than those by men, which means the difference in opinion over donkeys is much greater than the one over rattlesnakes.
This probably means that women like their creatures much more than men like theirs.
Read the full list here.
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