Our new paper offers an explanation for the universal law that "under carefully controlled conditions.... an animal behaves as it damn well pleases." We explore how stochastic mechanisms may play an underappreciated role in generating individuality. (1/7 🧵) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The MBirds paper is out! Congratulations to all collaborators on this major accomplishment 🧪 The study found interesting differences in neophobia between migratory and non-migratory species: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Fear of novelty varies across species & individuals, impacting adaptability & survival. @themanybirds.bsky.social @drrmiller.bsky.social &co assess #neophobia in 1400 subjects from 136 #bird species, identifying phylogenetic influences & broad ecological drivers @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4haLEsN

It was such an incredible, enriching, and fun experience — I learned so much ❤️ So thankful to the amazing leadership team who welcomed me! @drrmiller.bsky.social @vedranaslipogor.bsky.social @nomascus.bsky.social @stephanreber.bsky.social @cds-york.bsky.social Megan Lambert & Claudia Mettke-Hofmann

So excited that our first major empirical @themanybirds.bsky.social paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! Leading this big team science project, with our excellent core leadership team, is a labour of love for me, delighted to see our hard work over the past 4 years has reached this milestone!

New paper just out: Rachael Miller @drrmiller.bsky.social, Ning Ding & Nicky Clayton in Cognitive Development: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... on the “Cognitive correlates of future-oriented cognition in young Chinese children”. @campsydept.bsky.social @cam.ac.uk 1/

Stay tuned for a very exciting update coming shortly from the ManyBirds Project! Eeek!

Dream team: Alessandroni @drrmiller.bsky.social @dremalt.bsky.social @marinabazhydai.bsky.social @mamsmandrill.bsky.social @jespinosa.bsky.social Gjoneska @izziehb.bsky.social @valmazza.bsky.social Paukner @epronizius.bsky.social Proulx, Qadri, Reilly, Schwing ...

Really enjoyed giving an invited research talk today at the Behaviour and Evolution seminar series, Departments of Behavioural Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Theoretical Biology at Bielefeld University. Thank you @kpg13.bsky.social ‪for inviting me! 1/2

Check our new preprint! Our systematic review of 206 reversal learning studies shows that behavioural flexibility research is heavily biased towards birds, rodents, and humans, with most animal diversity virtually untested. #Manymanys #BigTeamScience #ComparativeCognition

Excited to share our latest preprint, just accepted in Animal Behaviour. Congrats to @kristyadaway.bsky.social on her first first-author publication! #ECRresearch #PhDpaper @uniofhull.bsky.social 🦝🧠🧩🌎 Link to preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Personality-driven hunting mortality in male moose, through habitat selection.

Honoured to receive this @compcogsoc.bsky.social award and incredibly grateful for our community's collaboration and support, thank you!

The Early Career Award Winner Featured Session starts at 11:30am! Award winner Rachael Miller @drrmiller.bsky.social will be talking about avian cognition and how it can be applied to #welfare and #conservation. #CO3_2025

🦅🧠 Bird Cognition 🧠🦅 Anyone who studies or is just fascinated by how birds perceive, learn, remember and solve problems 🐦 Let's all meet in this cool new #starterpack 🤩 Let me know if you want to join in too 🦜🦤🦉🦆🐣🪺🪶🧪 🔗 go.bsky.app/V2K7HQM #Ornithology #Birds #AnimalBehaviour

Excited to receive "Weighing Animal Welfare" book, edited & project led by Bob Fischer, Rethink Priorities, reporting on interdisciplinary project making interspecies welfare comparisons. Great to have contributed as a project consultant & co-author on 3 chapters. See: academic.oup.com/book/58809

So exciting to see MacaqueNet out into the world! 🤩 Learn about our global community & database centralizing standardized affiliative & agonistic data from 61 populations across 14 macaque species: doi/10.1111/1365... Explore >600 networks & request data: macaquenet.github.io/database/

A reminder about our OPEN CALL for submission of potential future ManyBirds studies: forms.gle/Qk4hZ6N6DxQB.... Please see link for all info on the process and planned review criteria. Deadline for submission is 31 May 2025. We welcome new ManyBirds collaborators to future studies!

An honour to be a co-editor, with @dralexschnell.bsky.social, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin and Josh Plotnik, for this Special Issue in Learning & Behavior dedicated to the wonderful Prof Nicky Clayton. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

How do you study an animal that lives in a totally different world? In this 1st episode of the Wild Behavior podcast [email protected] tells us about the incredible life of a dolphin researcher! Dive in with us (pun intended). Links below. (photo from Stephanie King)

With talks from Dr. Rachael Miller (@drrmiller.bsky.social), AND one of the most inspiring leaders in the field, Dr. Suzanne MacDonald, #CO3_2025 is going to be one of the best yet! 🎉 Haven't registered? What are you waiting for: www.comparativecognition.org/index.php @compcogsoc.bsky.social 🧪

NEW PODCAST! Woohoo 🥳 My side project with Megan Lambert is finally coming to fruition. If you're into animal behaviour and/or podcasts please give us a follow and subscribe 🎙️ #AVeryNotSeriousSciencePodcast #SciComm #animal #podcast

Thank you very much!

Congrats to Dr. Rachael Miller @Dr_Rmiller @drrmiller.bsky.social for receiving the @ComparativeCog Society Early Career Award! Rachel will give her talk "Avian cognition and behaviour: from fundamental to applied" at #CO3_2025 in Albuquerque in March.

I am truly honoured to receive the @compcogsoc.bsky.social Early Career Award & invite to present at the CO3 conference in March 2025, Albuquerque, US. Incredibly grateful to my family, friends, colleagues, collaborators, mentors & mentees for all your support – thank you so much! 🥰❤️

Reminder of upcoming deadline for this interesting PhD opportunity combining cognition with conservation with me, Alex Thornton and a great team - 13 Jan 2025! Details linked in post below:

Happy New Year all! New paper out in Animal Behaviour: Social attention across development in common ravens and carrion/ hooded crows with @drrmiller.bsky.social, Markus Boeckle, Sophie Ridgway, James Richardson, Florian Uhl, Thomas Bugnyar & Christine Schwab: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Challenges and promises of big team comparative cognition. Read our comment in @naturehumbehav.bsky.social It is one of the many upcoming #Manymanys projects! Stay tuned for more :) #BigTeamScience, #BTS, #OpenScience. rdcu.be/d30KP

The latest paper from the Bali myna project: "Combining cognition with conservation" is now submitted for publication and also available in pre-print: Social learning in Critically Endangered Bali myna with @drrmiller.bsky.social, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin & Arnaud Bruat - osf.io/preprints/os....

Interested in cognition, conservation and choughs? This PhD is for you! Fully funded by NERC GW4+. Based at @exetercec.bsky.social; co-supervised by @drrmiller.bsky.social and collaborators. Apply: tinyurl.com/58s9kb4k

👋 I am open to work. I am currently a Visiting Scholar (previously Research Associate, 2015-2022) at University of Cambridge and an Affiliate (previously Senior Lecturer, 2021-2024) at Anglia Ruskin University. Please see short academic CV attached or www.drrachaelmiller.com. 1/

hey everyone! i made a list of some useful starter packs (primarily biology/earth sciences with a few bonus things thrown in) to share with friends who have joined bsky in the last week and thought it may be useful for some people here too! 🌍🧪 #SciSky #BioSky docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Motivated by all these other animal-centric starter packs to fill in another niche: comparative cognition! go.bsky.app/5yu5SDr Let me know if you want to be added, or know someone who ought to be in the pack. Would be great to have representation from loads of species and places.

Resharing for new users to find collaborations or just people posting cool #animal #research! I think I've got a decent mix of taxonomic groups of interest, so hopefully this will be useful 🐟🦍🐠🦎🦗🦈🐧🦂🐬🕷️🐌🐢🐙🦟🐳🦁🦋🐊🐜🦆🐘🦃🦘🐛 DM to be added 😊 go.bsky.app/9CV3PAd #Behavior

Maybe late to the starter pack game? But haven't seen one specific to those studying the evolution of social behaviour, so made one! Any study species; humans, primates and beyond. Added some initial people but please comment to be added. go.bsky.app/CibACbM

Still finding it hard to reconnect with everyone from Twitter (X) so here’s an attempt at finding all animal behaviourists, ethologists, behavioural ecologists etc, working with animal behaviour. Just pop a comment and I’ll add you to the list - let’s reconnect 😃 #appliedethology go.bsky.app/8oJ3A8E

Exciting updates from @themanybirds.bsky.social - really happy we now have our preprint from ManyBirds Study 1 available! Such a pleasure to be a Co-Founder and Project Co-Lead for the ManyBirds Project, with an amazing core and study 1 leadership team, and so many wonderful collaborators. ❤️

Interested in cognition, conservation and choughs? This fully funded PhD opportunity is for you! @uniofexeter.bsky.social with me, Alex Thornton, Malcolm Nicoll, Liz Corry, Malcolm Burgess in collab with Wildwood Trust & @paradiseparkhayle.bsky.social. Apply: tinyurl.com/58s9kb4k