Authors: Haukka, Anna; Lehikoinen, Aleksi;Mammola, Stefano;Morris, William;Santangeli, Andrea;

Humans are fascinated by the astounding diversity of forms and colors of wildlife species. There are many examples of the cultural importance of wildlife species. Yet, understanding the attractiveness of species is of importance also from a scientific standpoint. Amidst a global biodiversity crisis, shedding light on the factors that make us like a species or another can inform conservation actions, e.g. leveraging flagship potential, and help identify threats. Despite many attempts to quantify bird species' attractiveness to humans, there is so far no global database on bird species' attractiveness to humans. We present a data set on the attractiveness of bird species to humans using visual appearance. The data are based on an internet browser-based questionnaire (iratebirds.app) where people were asked to evaluate the spontaneous attractiveness of bird species based on the best quality photographs from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library database. The rating was done on a scale of 1–10 and the scores were modeled to create the final database. The data set covers all the bird species and subspecies globally, with respondents from 78 home countries, and it is the first such attempt to quantify the overall attractiveness of all the bird species to humans.