Kids losing touch with natural world -- can't identify common animals...

I couldn't identify many of those, and I'm very knowledgeable about the natural world. There's more to it than long-range identification. I'd tell that it was an Oak by the leaves. Who sees a Daddy-Long-Legs from beneath a glass panel? A normal view from above would make it obvious. And the newt they show is not even mature, it's practically a hatchling!

And a shocking 75 percent misidentified a debtor's prison with an almshouse!

Kids "losing touch" implies a TREND, something which requires multiple surveys over time, which there obviously weren't.

The only thing alarming about 54% of British kids knowing what a blue tit is: the fact that _I_ don't know what a blue tit is.

It's impressively stupid. BBC personality (who does TV Nature shows) comments on stupid poll published by BBC Wildlife Magazine in order to shame parents into making their kids watch those same TV nature shows, since the vast majority of them probably don't have too much access to nature. It's basically a large and deceiving ad.

I wonder if "Sarah Cassidy, Education Correspondent" feels unclean.

I guess we're losing touch with nature because 97% of us don't have to touch it any longer to feed ourselves. Good thing if you ask me. I'd rather kids (and adults for that matter) knew a little bit about taxes, law or how to calculate compound interest of their debt.

There are things about natural systems that affect us and things that are interesting, but identifying and classifying plants outside of any context is not one of them.

How is a 9 year old supposed to know the difference between a newt and a lizard? A lot of adults probably don't know it too. After googleing it, i found that daddy long-legs is actually 3 different species. if you show me pictures of them i couldn't name them, two looked like spiders, and one was like a mosquito or something. Maybe i was just not in touch with nature when i was a kid.

We need some context here - which kids where?

Funny, they don't show a time trend. So how are they "losing touch" with the natural world?

Already covered by Monty Python years ago.

...The LARCH... ...The LARCH...

why would you memorize what you can google on your iphone from anywhere? memorizing rarely-used facts is out of date.

besides, kids can now identify more species of lolcat than ever before.