Remember, the association between a camel and Perl is trademarked by O'Reilly, and used in several of their books. It is clearly not in O'Reilly's interests to dilute the value of that trademark by including any alternate image that other publishers can copy. Therefore it will be very difficult to convince O'Reilly to give prominent placement to any symbol other than the camel.

It is amazing how smart people and companies will avoid shooting their own feet, no matter how politely you ask.

I should further note that O'Reilly's position in the Perl world was not accidental. In the mid-90's O'Reilly saw that Perl was an opportunity that was big enough to be really interested, but small enough that they conceivably could dominate that market. I know this because I've seen an internal newsletter from back then where Tim explained their decision to go into Perl in a big way. Among other things, O'Reilly hired Larry Wall for several years, were critical to making the One Perl effort work, started (and sponsored!) various conferences on Perl and open source, and came out with a whole series of top-notch books on Perl.

Perl received a lot from this effort. O'Reilly did as well, and their recognizable Camel brand is a large part of it. It took them time and money to establish that brand, and I find it hard to believe that they would voluntarily help weaken it.