Why did evolution give us menopause? And why is it only humans and a handful of whales that seem to experience it? A short piece on evolution, reproductive conflict, and the mystery of grandmothers. nicholaraihani.substack.com/p/why-did-ev...

Sneak peek at the US cover for THE THINKING ANIMAL, coming Jan '27. Looking forward to sharing more - soon! @stmartinspress.bsky.social @zcosini.bsky.social

JFC are these publishers not making enough money by rinsing authors, institutions, and readers already? Why do they have to plaster banner ads over the reference list….

So I just described cleaner fish punishment to my 3rd year undergraduates as ‘when the fish gets banged, it behaves more cooperatively in the future’

Nice coincidence that a big study of cooperation decline in microfinance in Sierra Leone has appeared in Nature just after our meta-analysis. Hints that partner choice, reciprocity and punishment were involved, but sadly no explicit focus on non-proximate explanations www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Your brain does not have old (reptilian) and new (mammalian) parts. Related: you do not have an inner chimp.

Question for the Bsky hive mind: what’s the most batshit pop Evolutionary Psychology study you’ve ever come across? Particularly interested in examples in the area of female parental investment, but I’ll take others too …

The ‘key phrase’ style for book referencing.

One of the world’s leading authorities on autism - very important read: www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

Excited to share our latest work in @nature.com showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior. Full text available here: rdcu.be/e6PnY

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

This study finds that people vary in their motives for punishment. Punishment motives are predicted by personality, social preferences, political and religious views, and self-reported strategies. @scottclaessens.bsky.social @nicholaraihani.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Slashing all Marsden grants to social science and humanities another Judith Collins legacy www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

#OpenAccess from @bppjournal.bsky.social - Negative anecdotes reduce policy support: evidence from three experimental studies on communicating policy (in)effectiveness - https://cup.org/4jDoXyD - A.Rodger, G.A.Sanna, @vanessachg.bsky.social, @nicholaraihani.bsky.social#OpenAccess& D.Lagnado #FirstView

It's hiring season at @iast.fr! - 2y research postdoc contract - Full autonomy, you are your own PI - Awesome multidisciplinary environment - All social and behavioral sciences welcome - Seed funding for projects and workshops - Gorgeous city in the south of France www.iast.fr/research-fel...

I appear to have spoken to a reporter who took seriously the gravity of NZ's science crisis does anybody have a newsroom pro subscription so that I can learn what other choice phrases I used on the record? newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/29/w...

Jane Goodall, Eminent Primatologist Who Chronicled the Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91. Gift link: nyti.ms/48FOuUn

In general I think it's hard to combat scientific misinformation when some of the best research is locked behind an academic paywall, while lots of nonsense gets published free for everyone to read in predatory journals.

The first draft is DONE.

I wonder how things would be if the mining bosses and government officials had to raise *their* kids in these lead-poisoned environments.

This is a complete dereliction of responsibility from all involved. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

At @ishe-society.bsky.social, we are looking for someone to review @mgurven.bsky.social new book, "Seven decades" for Human Ethology. It looks terribly interesting! DM/email for details (and to get a hard copy 😊) @princetonupress.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Harvard Sues Ex-HBS Professor Gino for Defamation, Accusing Her of Falsifying Evidence www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

So excited - Domination is number 3 in the Sunday Times bestseller list! And it seems I can’t get away from medieval cities and monasteries on a rainy Sunday afternoon!

UCDavis Psych is hiring an Assistant Professor in Human Cognition or Cognitive Neuroscience 🧠✨ Come join a vibrant, collaborative dept and live in a fun college town near Sacramento, San Francisco, Napa, and Lake Tahoe. Applications due Oct.21. Please share widely! recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07300

📖 Our letter of reply to 'pseudosocial' cognition is now out in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Led by the talented @srazavi.bsky.social + written with @vaughanbell.bsky.social, Peter Dayan, @nicholaraihani.bsky.social, Michael Moutoussis #NeuroPsychSky

Our response to Corlett & co on what they call 'pseudo-social' paranoia is now online in TICS. We hope this clarifies some persistent misunderstandings of our work and approach. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

University of Auckland is hiring a lecturer in social psychology. smrtr.io/tfSY- Please share with your networks.

University of Auckland is hiring a lecturer in social psychology. smrtr.io/tfSY- Please share with your networks.

🧠 What?! A meeting just on disgust?! Yes!! 📍 @iast.fr, France | 🗓 Dec 4–5, 2025 💥 Keynotes by Paul Rozin @upenn.edu, @cr-amo.bsky.social, Philip Powell @sheffielduni.bsky.social & Cindy Kam 🌍 From Psychology to Politics, Biology & beyond 🎓 Abstract submissions until Aug 31: forms.gle/QBmkUB3aLDjY...

An exciting event for Aucklanders in November; pls share Talk: Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain 👩‍🎓 Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore 📍University of Auckland 📆 Tues 11/11/25| 1815 Free but ticketed. www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/inventing-... @sjblakemore.bsky.social

Hive mind: I'm writing a book chapter called Utter Bastards – intended to showcase the ways in which animals (yes, incl. us) can be 'nasty'. I've got lots of the obvious candidates e.g. siblicide, infanticide, sexual coercion etc. anything *unusual* you think should be in there?

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

New data on friendship in baboons & infant survival upends a classic result. For years, we've thought that more social females had more surviving offspring, but this suggests that the result stemmed from reverse causality: females with infants become more social. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Director at Max Planck - a unique position! The Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships is open now and can be submitted by the 31st of October 2025. ➡️ mpg.de/directors - Please share the Open Call among potential candidates.

Canada has long been committed to a two-state solution — an independent, viable, and sovereign Palestinian state living side by side with the State of Israel in peace and security.   My statement on Canada’s recognition of a Palestinian state:

Nice piece highlighting the importance of food processing in human evolution: “Next time you sit down for a meal, appreciate the food-processing revolution—pounding, cooking, mashing done by women—that opened humans to a diversity of foods that allowed us to thrive in all the world’s environments”

🚨 Calling all dog behavior & cognition researchers - ManyDogs Project is launching ManyDogs 2! 🔍🐕‍🦺We're studying overimitation: Do dogs copy irrelevant actions just b/c their favorite human does them? Email [email protected] to collaborate globally and contribute to reproducible science!

“a deliberate, systematic starvation of an entire population” A statement by Doctors Against Genocide. #Gaza

Read it! It's not short but it's important. It's about why running our universities like corporations is killing them. Quentin goes beyond the usual complaints and really lays out the institutional dynamics that make universities and corporate managerialism incompatible.

This is alarming. A major function of a university is to assess & report student quality (via grades) - info that is helpful for future employers. LLMs (and the transactional nature of higher ed) both make that increasingly difficult. And now Canvas may supplant us anyway.

My colleague Quentin Atkinson wrote this piece - How Not To Run a University. It is an insanely good read about how managerialism is destroying universities. Make time for it. Talk about it. Share it. quentinatkinson.substack.com/s/how-not-to...

"Writers have been using me long before the advent of AI. I am the punctuation equivalent of a cardigan—beloved by MFA grads, used by editors when it’s actually cold, and worn year-round by screenwriters. I am not new here."

“Parenting is never perfect. Cultures raise children differently, shaping adults valued by their own standards. But one truth emerges: Learning to care for others should start long before having a baby” www.sapiens.org/biology/to-r...

TIL that the average romantic kiss transfers approximately 80 million (!) bacteria. You're welcome. 😗 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I'm very proud to have won the Royal Statistical Society's award for best statistical commentary by a non-journalist this year 🥹

Using time series graphs to make causal claims be like

Your next Fall read, my new book: SEVEN DECADES: HOW WE EVOLVED TO LIVE LONGER Longevity is shaped by our evolutionary past—imagine aging as opportunity rather than burden. Out Sept 16, preorder w/ code PUP30 for 30% discount: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... @princetonupress.bsky.social