Pheasants aren’t wild birds freely roaming the British countryside. They’re non-native animals, mass bred in factory farms, then released in huge numbers onto country estates just so they can be shot out of the sky for entertainment. It’s an industry built on suffering.

Wondering if I'm the only one to have just finished my poster for @ces2026.bsky.social and now actually read the instructions which say landscape not portrait. Back to the drawing board!

We have an *extremely* important announcement to make. From Wednesday, we will be launching our puffin live cam, coming to you from the Farne Islands. So you can watch puffins all day long. In celebration, please enjoy this clip of puffins being really busy for 39 seconds straight.

I can't believe they got this interview with the walrus

I'm sure there are more Dutch accents here in Glencoe than there were in Amsterdam recently

A fine day for a bike loop around Glenfinnan and Ardgour. (Bit of a different bike from the sit-up city bike i hired in leiden a week or so ago)

A bit of sun and snow in Glencoe

Home for the weekend

I am excited to be speaking at Pint of Science in Newcastle on May 20th! I will be giving a public talk on my recent work, looking at how changes in human culture over time have contributed to the loneliness epidemic. Details below. I'd love to see you there! pintofscience.co.uk/event/losing...

I don't recommend being punched - really struggling to hear properly 6 months on...

Remembering Gaza scholars. Honoring the lives and legacies of Palestinian academics whose voices have been silenced. 🇵🇸 rememberinggazascholars.org

After attending the 'AIvolution' meeting of @ehbea.bsky.social in Leiden last week, topical to see this paper on "evolvable AI" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Rounded off the CBEN & @ehbea.bsky.social conferences in Leiden with a bike ride to the coast, running into some fine floral displays on the way

In the Netherlands, Tesla owners go under cover

Great to be at @ehbea2026.bsky.social and to hear so many great talks. Not so clever was missing the abstract deadline so here's the poster I presented here at the CBEN preconference day

It may indeed be the death of a civilization - that of US society unless they remove Trump from office

My first swallows of the year and sand martins back - nice birthday present

To put things in perspective...

Meanwhile, on the moon...

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

It doesn't seem such a novelty spotting satellites go by these days.. www.theguardian.com/science/ng-i...

This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Minhua Yan @minhuayan.bsky.social @iast.fr The persistence and adaptation of social norms: Theory and field evidence Date: March 27 Time: 15:00 UTC+1 (Vienna) / 10 am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

One of the weirdest thing in about academia is hearing people vent about how their department and/or university” is a shitshow, but then when their departments are hiring their like “come work with me, my department and university are the best place to work in the world!”

As someone who was recently punched while I was down (after being punched to the ground), I can't say I find this particularly clever

Three weeks ago I spent a few days in one of our global dark sky sanctuaries in Rakiura Stewart Island New Zealand. Never has deep time felt so real or so close. But every now and then one of Elon's dumbfuck satellites would interrupt the eternal rhythms of the stars. Let's not let it get worse.

1/ 🎮🌍 Shared Horizons Seminar Series We’re delighted to welcome Dr Patricia Kanngiesser (University of Plymouth) to Brunel Psychology for: “Games for the future: Using experimental games to study sustainable behaviour across ages and populations.” 🗓 25 Feb 2026 | 2-4pm open to all 🔓

Evolution is often framed as a cosmic struggle of all against all. Yet everything we observe about life is the product of cooperation. Understanding how cooperation is sustained is a key insight for thinking about how to organise society. www.optimallyirrational.com/p/cooperatio...

1. I’m quite happy with this popular piece that Lee Dugatkin and I wrote recently. For the next two weeks it’s free to read on the American Scientist website.

New @aeon.co essay just out! On how institutions let us scale trust and cooperation - and when things start to unravel. Big thanks to editor Sam Dresser. For the more technical version, see thread & paper below👇

We're excited to announce the Spring 2026 Cooperation Colloquia! With @yanchenl.bsky.social @minhuayan.bsky.social @saptarshi.bsky.social @aronszekely.bsky.social @shafenbraedl.bsky.social @shuxianjin.bsky.social @smconstantino.bsky.social and more Sign up here: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

The Norwegian government is staying fairly quiet for now, but as a sign of the shifting vibe here the former head of Norway’s armed forces has come out and called the US a “neo-fascist banana republic” and a “hostile great power without norms”. www.dn.no/politikk/tid...

A nice morning for a walk in the Cairngorms

Researcher looking for a desk / fieldwork. I'm currently without a job / home / commitments so if you know of a spare desk in a friendly lab, or fieldwork that needs doing then let me know. Evolutionary biology / behavioural sciences.

It’s amazing how people who know nothing about Darwinian evolution—or what was has held up (and not held up) over time—confidently invoke “Darwin was right” to justify hateful, eugenic sentiments.

An important statement from the desk of Robin Ince

This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Alex Mesoudi @alexmesoudi.com Experimental evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans Date: December 5 Time: 15:00 UTC+1 (Vienna) / 9 am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

I still like to think of myself as a behavioural ecologist. I think a training in behavioural ecology is hard to beat.

I used to enjoy impressing people by identifying birds from a faint call in a wood. Now, thanks to the phenomenal success of the Merlin app, many people are telling me about the birds they have heard. Interesting to read the story of the Merlin app here - www.birds.cornell.edu/home/the-mag...

Hands up those using ChatGPT to write lecture slides www.theguardian.com/education/20...

"Multiple men have remained in senior roles at Oxford for months or years after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against them, Bloomberg found in a nine-month investigation based on interviews with almost 50 people as well as documents and other records."

Apply now for a NERC-funded PhD position with @andyradford.bsky.social & Patrick Kennedy at @bristolbiosci.bsky.social (with me as friendly 2nd supervisor down the road in @crab-exeter.bsky.social). Network cognition, cooperation, competition...what's not to like? www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

First exercise since being beaten up in Sept. Hoping to manage my first hour of research later...

In an increasingly divided world, how do strangers become friends? Parakeets might have something to teach us! New paper on formation of affiliative relationships, led by Dr. Claire O’Connell doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Good morning to all those people who wasted the last decade saying, "there's no point tackling climate change in the UK, because China." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Just been watching the latest David Attenborough. Worth more than any number of Trumps.