It takes decades to see how climatic cycles interact with the social dynamics of animal societies. Now a 33-year dataset of 12 capuchin groups + satellite environmental data has an answer. @livingingroups.bsky.social @oddjacobson.bsky.social @bjjbarrett.bsky.social www.ab.mpg.de/857503/news_...

New paper out today in Nat Ecol Evol! On how within- and between-group competition jointly shape ranging in wild capuchins, and how the environment tips the balance. Thread below 🐒

I'm so honored to have received this award in memory of Frans de Waal for my PhD thesis! His work (and briefly working with him) truly shaped my scientific thinking and research. @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

It was an absolutely amazing talk!! It was a real honor to host you here and hear so many inspired discussions @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

What do we love more than chunky orca babies? Chunky AIRBORNE orca babies! Check out these spectacular shots of 2-year-old T46B2B "Takaya" taken a few days ago in Port Susan, Washington by Bart Rulon of @pugetsoundexpress.com.

We are offering two 4-year PhD positions in our new SNF project "The Evolutionary Roots of Altercentrism"

Just Gal Pals! The Differential Treatment of Sexual Behavior Among Nonhuman Great Apes onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New open access publication in Topoi! @kristinandrews.bsky.social and I explore the ethics of AI animal translation projects. 🖥️🐬Before we build it, we need to take stock of the ethical implications. rdcu.be/fbZwv 🧵👇1/13

I'm hiring! 📢 Fully funded 4-year PhD position in Language Evolution using Communication Games at @mpi-nl.bsky.social. Come work with me on how different social pressures shape the evolution of new communication systems in the lab! Deadline for application is May 18th! share.google/fGTKbFS4v4Gb...

Just got the lovely news that our article on why female capuchin monkeys 🐒 on Jicarón island do not use tools (see 🧵below) is in the top 10 most-cited articles published by the American Journal of Primatology in 2024 @wiley.com #TopCitedArticle #openaccess

A new review in Animal Behaviour finds that of 89 mirror self-recognition studies, only a small handful involved invertebrates. The paper also calls for species-appropriate test designs beyond the visual mirror paradigm. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New OA paper @royalsocietypublishing.org: What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation? royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... Lovely collab with @lirsamuni.bsky.social Martin Surbeck and Richard Connor.

One of our IMPRS Faculty Members, @heesenr.bsky.social , is currently looking for applications. Please follow this link for more information: imprs-qbee.mpg.de/125923/docto...

Synesthetes claim sensory experiences, such as seeing color when reading or hearing a (black) number. 
But how genuine are these reports and sensations? We introduce a rather direct measure of synesthetic perception: Synesthetes’ pupils respond to evoked color as if it was real color #vision! 👁️🎨🧪

3-year Independent Post-doc in Animal Behavior based at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama! Three positions, each including salary & a research budget. Applications due April, 15th. DM if you are interesting in developing a project with us! stri.si.edu/academic-pro...

"we present a historical summary of the ape culture wars since their inception and how this has evolved over time. We then focus on debates surrounding wild versus captive-ape research with an emphasis on culture, detailing major arguments arising from both research domains" doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

i'm back in @science.org reporting on a newly discovered "lunar compass" used by bull ants! these ants return home from foraging trips by observing the arc of the moon and integrating it with their sense of time—the first animals known to do so 🧪 learn more in the link below:

In this episode, Nate speaks with primatologist and author @christinewebb.bsky.social about human exceptionalism – the deeply embedded belief that humans are separate from and superior to the rest of nature. www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/213-...

New publication, and first one as a first author for me! 🥳 Have you heard of the brutal chimpanzee and "hippie" bonobo dichotomy? ☠️🕊️ Today, we report similar aggression magnitudes in 22 captive chimpanzees and bonobos groups - be it all aggression or restricted to contact.

🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

Registrations are now open 📢 Want to join the conference and/or the workshop? Head to our website: culture-conference.com/registration/ As every year, attendance at the conference is free 🎉 (the workshop has a small fee). Reminder: Abstract submission closes soon—submit yours before Monday!

After many years of trying to combine my 2 passions, art 🎨 and science 👩‍🔬, into something meaningful, i have created an educational #ChildrensBook! 📚 ✨ Meet The Rimba🦧, a gentle, lyrical tale about a wise orangutan guardian spirit who protects her rainforest home and the creatures who depend on it.

Our New Paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour: 🚨 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! 🦧 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... See 🧵

For your consideration, our paper about how we can build a better error culture around biologging is now out in Animal Behavio(u)r. A collaborative effort between researchers the veterinarians at @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

2025. Fatal Flaws are Ingrained in Laboratory Animal Research-But who cares? "we conducted a structured review of animal experiments published in North America and Europe in 2022... not even one followed the principles of rigorous experimental design." communities.springernature.com/posts/fatal-...

🎉 Congratulations to Kat Stewart 🎓 for succesfully defending her thesis "Factors influencing intergroup encounter dynamics in a wild bonobo 🐒 population: the untold story of risk, reward and the roots of warfare", supervised by Barbara Fruth 🥂

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

Want to know more about monkeys kidnapping other monkeys?🐒 I had an amazing chat together with @bjjbarrett.bsky.social on @sidedoorpod.bsky.social about the Coiban capuchins and their wild antics. Science really is stranger than fiction! Listen 👂 here: www.si.edu/sidedoor/mon...

Are you studying animal sociality? My (now published) first PhD chapter proposes a Bayesian + causal framework to infer the factors shaping the social relationships that animals form with one another. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

🦅PhD position 🦅 in my new group at @fbm-unil.bsky.social in Switzerland, studying how the social and resource landscapes shape the learning process for soaring flight. Deadline: Oct 30. Pls repost! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

I am humbled to have received much praise for THE ARROGANT APE (Avery / Penguin Random House) out September 2. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717436/the-arrogant-ape-by-christine-webb

WeTransfer just changed their TOS giving themselves permission to train AI on any content you transfer and produce derivative works based on content you transfer that they are allowed to monetize and you are not allowed payment for. Stop using WeTransfer.

❓Why do the Nordics & Dutch speak English so much better than the Germans, Italians & French? ➡️ New Working Paper: Out-of-School Learning: Subtitling vs. Dubbing and the Acquisition of Foreign-Language Skills w/ F. Baumeister & E. Hanushek www.nber.org/papers/w33984 A 🧵 1/12

~5 years, 5 chapters, and one real human baby later, my "academic" baby is finally done. After a defense in near-boiling conditions, where even the beamer quit halfway through, I am now officially Dr. Zoë 🎓🐒 I am so grateful for this experience, and all my friends and family lifting me up! #PhDone

been a long time coming, there's now a preprint along with Will Hoppitt describing our new R package for creating, fitting and interpreting bayesian NBDA models (STBayes). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Documentation is here michaelchimento.github.io/STbayes/inde...

In a recent correspondence, @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social and colleagues report the origin and spread of a cultural tradition of interspecies abduction of infant howler monkeys by male white-faced capuchin monkeys in the wild. www.cell.com/current-biol...

🐒🚨„Affen kidnappen Babys anderer Affenart“. Habt ihr diese unglaubliche News gelesen - von #Kapuzineräffchen und #Brüllaffen in #Panama? Bio-Doktorandin @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social hat‘s entdeckt. Mir hat sie erzählt, was hinter dem traurigen Kidnapping steckt: www.zeit.de/wissen/umwel... @zeit.de

Monkeys kidnap the babies of other monkeys, and then wear them around for days on end... it's a grim tale I've written for the @nytimes.com! www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/s...

Some sketches for this surprising publication by ‪ @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @bjjbarrett.bsky.social @meg-crofoot.bsky.social @livingingroups.bsky.social Capuchin monkeys abducting howler monkey infants and carrying them around! 😐

🧪🏺 Capuchins kidnapping howler infants: fascinated by many aspects of this- rapidity of 'fashion' spread, individual variation but also sex bias, and relevance in helping us imagine multiplicity of inter-species hominin interactions, inc. #Neanderthals & early H. sapiens www.cell.com/current-biol...

The capuchins on Jicaron are intriguing everyone, from scientists to the general public 🙈 Stories from our latest paper by @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social @bjjbarrett.bsky.social and team! Paper: www.cell.com/current-biol... 🧵 @lizlandau.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/s...

#Capuchins are abducting baby howlers. But why? Zoë Goldsborough, Brendan Barrett, and Meg Crofoot @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social discuss what’s behind this novel animal tradition. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mooQ... @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social

Young, male capuchin monkeys have started kidnapping the babies of nearby howler monkeys. Why? Maybe boredom.

Cross-species teamwork from @livingingroups.bsky.social reveals unexpected similarities in three social mammals 🤔 By lead author @pminasandra.bsky.social with Emily Grout, Katrina Brock, Meg Crofoot, Vlad Demartsev, Amlan Nayak, Eli Strauss, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin🧵1/2 www.ab.mpg.de/679000/news_...

Therapist: The kidnapping capuchin monkeys aren't real and can't hurt you. Nature: www.popsci.com/environment/...

Scientists studying footage from Jicarón Island spotted something unusual: a capuchin monkey carrying an infant howler on his back. Now, they’re trying to learn what it means. cnn.it/3H1dtWA

Capuchins surprising us again, this time rather unpleasantly... featuring @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social and @bjjbarrett.bsky.social! www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...