A virtual reality pangolin made me cry and care more about the planet: Is this the real power of VR headsets?

For many, constant bad news numbs our reaction to climate disasters. But research suggests that a new type of immersive storytelling about nature told through virtual reality (VR) can both build empathy and inspire us to act.

I'm crying into a VR headset. I've just watched a VR experience that tells the story of a young pangolin called Chestnut, as she struggles to survive in the Kalahari Desert. A vast, dusty landscape extends around me in all directions, and her armoured body seems vulnerable as she curls up, alone, to sleep. Her story is based on the life of a real pangolin that was tracked by scientists.

Chestnut hasn't found enough to ants to eat, since insect numbers have dwindled due to climate change. Her sunny voice remains optimistic even as exhaustion takes over. In the final scenes, she dies, and I must clumsily lift my headset to dab my eyes.

VR experiences can be a lot more than just moving or fun, research suggests. Scientists are discovering that nature experiences shown through VR can affect our attitudes and behaviours – and that these arresting depictions of nature might nudge us into taking better care of our environment.

My powerful VR experience with Chestnut's story was made by HabitatXR, a production studio based in Johannesburg. Founder Ulrico Grech-Cumbo launched the company in 2016, following many trips to the African bush during which he captured its green, dusty landscapes and iconic wildlife on camera. He had experience working in VR, and realised that he could translate his footage into something more immersive.

"I thought it would be a hell of a lot of fun being inside a natural history documentary," he says.

HabitatXR is just one of the companies experimenting with VR technology to create nature experiences. Wild Immersion, based in Paris, take their immersive movies of underwater worlds and snowscapes to science centres and aquariums. And UK artist collective Marshmallow Laser Feast have created immersive experiences that show the forest through the eyes of a dragonfly, and take the viewer "inside" a tree.

The nature experiences developed by HabitatXR are situated in a virtual version of the African savannah. In one, I find myself in a misty landscape dotted with squat, flat-topped acacias. Suddenly a rhinoceros emerges, dangerously close, its enormous horn scything the air as it walks towards me and lowers its head.

Despite the pixelated graphics, I instinctively look down to where my knee should be – to where the rhino's horn ought to have grazed it. The beast lets out a breathy snort and, mercifully, retreats.

I'm beginning to see how emotionally compelling this kind of storytelling can be. And I'm not alone – when an environmental NGO took one of HabitatXR's VR experiences to a fundraising gala, Grech-Cumbo saw the powerful effect it had on those who watched it. "High net worth individuals were strolling around with expensive watches and glasses of champagne," he says. "We'd sit them down in a dark room and put a VR headset on them, and five minutes later, they'd be crying. That's not something I've ever seen a film do [to] 50 people at a time."

Grech-Cumbo's observation is reflected in scientific research, which finds that VR tends to trigger stronger emotions than other media. Engaging in a VR experience about a Syrian refugee elicits more intense emotions than reading an article showing the same images and information, for example.

There may be particular benefits to VR content that deals with nature. One nature experience depicting a forest of majestic trees, for example, made people more likely to take action to protect the environment, such as signing a petition on plastic reduction or taking flyers to spread the word about the petition. Another, of a journey through the Amazon rainforest, found that participants who experienced the forest through VR reported feeling more connected to nature and expressed greater commitment to the environment than participants who watched the same rainforest visuals on a standard computer screen.

VR is particularly good at making us feel a complex and impactful emotion: awe. Psychologists describe awe as the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. It can make us feel wonder, but also uncertainty. And research suggests that experiencing awe can make us more inclined to make personal sacrifices for the environment. 

These recent scientific analyses of awe build on a long history of its exploration in philosophy and the arts. It particularly obsessed certain 18th-Century poets and writers, whose experience of what they called "the sublime" was often inspired by nature. (Learn more about the power of awe in this article by Richard Fisher about the upsides of feeling small.)

Alice Chirico, a psychologist at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy, has studied VR's ability to make us feel awe, and how this might impact people's relationship to the natural world. She has found that VR nature experiences prompt us to feel awe when they induce a sense of vastness – like huge mountains and tall trees. In another study, she found that these kinds of awe-inspiring virtual nature experiences made people more likely to take social actions geared towards protecting the environment.

"Awe is able to support positive attitudes towards the environment and also a sense of attachment towards the environment – a kind of nature connectedness, the feeling of being included within something that is much bigger than us," Chirico says. 

VR can do this in ways that other media formats can't, she says, because it can drop us into a story and create the illusion that we're part of it. VR "manipulates the sense of presence", Chirico says, creating "the illusion of being really there in that specific place in that specific moment, as if it is reality itself".

The immersive advantage VR may have over other media such as articles or videos could have real world impacts. Researchers have found that people are more inclined to save energy at home when they learn about the need for pro-environmental behaviours through VR, rather than from an article or video. They suggest that the difference is because of what they call the "presence mechanism" – the feeling of truly being inanother world.

These experiences typically bring the viewer up close to their subject – face to face with a gorilla, or inside a migrating wildebeest herd. Feelings of immersion in such scenes might be limited by current technology, however. For me, the horn-swinging rhino was striking, though not visually believable. Researchers suggest that rich, high resolution imagery is important for immersing the viewer in the experience. VR tech likely to improve in the coming years, as accessories heighten the realism of virtual worlds. There is even a glove able to convince its wearer that a spider is crawling across their hand, for example.

Despite decades of excitement over VR, the technology has struggled to break into the mainstream. Even today, relatively few people have access to VR headsets, with only around 10 million of the devices sold across the globe every year. Reports suggest that Apple's long-awaited Vision Pro headset, for example – which costs $3,499 in the US and £3,499 in the UK – has achieved a fraction of its expected sales.

"Even though I've been working in this world for 10 years, there's probably a nine out of 10 chance that if I put a headset on a person, it's their first time wearing a VR headset," Grech-Cumbo says.

Even if the technology were more accessible, could dazzling virtual experiences undermine our appreciation for local, everyday nature? It is important, Grech-Cumbo acknowledges, that eye-catching VR nature experiences don't distract us from the real forests, parks and mountain ranges near to where we live.

"This is about understanding our own relationship with nature, wherever we are," he says.

With this in mind, HabitatXR is now working on a project that will bring virtual nature into cities, starting with Johannesburg. Their plans for a VR "Zoo of the Future" will include a web of life experience, in which people will be able to virtually pick up individual species – flowers, grasses, bugs, animals – from an ecosystem map, and see their ecological links to other species.

"[We want to] put an emphasis on the fact that we are all connected – whether we believe it or not, whether we like it or not," Grech-Cumbo says.

Chirico emphasises that VR's goal should not be to replace reality and nature. There are lots of things virtual nature can't do. Studies suggest it can't boost our mood in the same way real nature can, for instance. However, it could be democratising. "People don't [always] have full or easy access to nature, so the goal is to provide it in a cheaper way," Chirico says.

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In the US, for example, 100 million people, including 28 million children, reportedly do not have access to parks close to their homes. VR nature experiences might, in such cases, enable people to interact with an unreal yet informative and inspiring version of nature. Plus, adds Chirico, "There's the fact that you don't have to move from your home, so the emissions are reduced – you can explore amazing panoramas that otherwise would require hours and hours of traveling by plane or car."

As I blinked through tears towards the end of HabitatXR's story about Chestnut the pangolin, some white text floated in front of me before the credits rolled: "This isn't a story about pangolins. Or ants. Or even climate change. This is a story about us," it read – a reminder that humans are part of the same ecosystems as plants and other animals.

"The overarching message," Grech-Cumbo says, "is that we are a part of nature, not the opposite of nature."

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