The academic study of Religion also remains misunderstood as @vox-magica.bsky.social notes—whether because of its common misinterpretation as theological or the sense that it’s arcane +

A lot of the justifications point to the number of Religious Studies majors—but is this really how a dept’s value should be judged? In many RS departments in which I’ve taught, our courses have enormous enrollments & student interest +

Really happy to share this article I'm grateful to have been a part of: 'Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience' coauthored with @kevinlala.bsky.social, @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social and Marcus Feldman. Check out a preprint here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #ScientificRacism #Antiracism

part of the issue may be that when people say ‘the humanities’, or my personal favorite, ‘the humanities and social sciences’ they could be referring to any of 53982 things that have very little to do with each other

I admit that I do not fully grasp what the knowledge of an ongoing genocide demands of me, but I think if I were not bothered by that question—if I batted it away, like a gnat—it could only be because something essential and irreplaceable had absented itself from my soul.

Happy to share our new paper introducing the Animal Culture Database in Scientific Data: We’re putting together a resource consolidating primary research on cultural behaviors in wild animal populations and how they’re affected by human activity (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New theme issue in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B @royalsocietypublishing.org: Animal culture: conservation in a changing world Edited by @pbrakes.bsky.social, @lucymaplin.bsky.social, @emma-carroll.bsky.social, Alison L Greggor, Andrew Whiten and @ellengarland.bsky.social doi.org/10.1098/rstb...

“Protecting the living cultural landscapes of animal stone-tool-use sites involves preserving the environments where these behaviors occur and recognizing the intrinsic value of animal cultures” 🏺🧪🐒

Inside me there are two wolves. One of them has a 15 genome edits the other 20 genome edits. Neither of them is a dire wolf.

I cannot imagine an ecologist saying "I'm going to start a genomics project, I don't know anything about DNA but how hard can it be?" You'd ask someone who knew. You'd learn. You should do the same for social science research! Obviously!

We would love feedback on a new NCBI-BLAST service we are launching today: sky-blast.com Under the hood it's the same BLAST executable and databases provided by NCBI, with a replica of the NIH's interface - providing an alternative to the US gov service that's less congested, faster & more reliable

New paper on the demographic drivers of cultural evolution in Great Tit song published today - epic work led by @nilomr.bsky.social with help from @andreaestandia.bsky.social Ella Cole & Sara Keen. Why did we do this, and what did we find? 🧵 follows: 1/n www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

CES offers its full support to the Stand Up For Science rallies in the U.S. on March 7 2025.

Apparently the doi doesn't work for some people, so here's the full link: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... ☺️

Do whales optimize their vocalizations for efficiency, just like human language? 🐋🎶 My latest study in Science Advances (@science.org) suggests they do—following linguistic laws seen in human speech. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Tips for preserving websites:

📣📣📣 Applications for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!! Are you interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply! More info: disi.org

Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... In our new paper we review 130 papers and summarise empirical evidence for socioecological factors affecting vocal communication, as well as evidence for vocal learning in different corvid species.

We're on BlueSky now! Hello! We are Common Descent, a podcast about paleontology, evolution, and the history of life on Earth! We release episodes every fortnight! Each one focuses on a topic requested by our audience! commondescentpodcast.com

Have you ever heard the underwater song of a bearded seal, the call of a walrus, the call of a baby crocodile, or the song of a fruit fly? All these sounds (and more) are on "The ‘Voices of Nature. How and Why Animals Communicate’ book website 👇 mathevon0.wixsite.com/soundjourney... #bioacoustics

The team at Mutual Aid L.A. has launched a comprehensive spreadsheet tracking all of the shelters/food kitchens/evac sites/resources for anyone impacted by the Los Angeles fires. Far more comprehensive and in-depth than mine. Please use their list. Stay safe. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Striking images can make scientific ideas accessible to people from all walks of life. But some such pictures do more damage than good, seeding confusion & fueling widespread misconceptions of an essential topic. To illustrate, a thread about two iconic images & (mis)understanding evolution. 1/9

iNatSounds: new dataset from folks @inaturalist.bsky.social & co-authors; looks to be one of the largest public datasets of animal sounds openreview.net/forum?id=QCY... github.com/visipedia/in... #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics

Announcement! The next @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social CES conference will be at UM6P in Rabat, Morocco, provisional dates 11-13th May 2026! Hosted by Mathieu Charbonneau, @sarahalami.bsky.social, @zhgarfield.com & @edseabright.bsky.social. Save the dates! culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...

As an evolutionary anthropologist who spent some time studying religion, Islam, and violence, listening to this was incredibly cathartic

Wow hi everyone, welcome to Bluesquid I mean Bluesquid I mean Here's a polished-up size comparison chart I made for #Squidtember! Pygmy squid to colossal squid, these guys have the range . . . 🧪🦑🐡

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

If you are abroad and want to help I suggest you #donate to the #LebaneseRedCross. It is literally a simple click away. These people are doing heroic work, are apolitical and do not discriminate. www.redcross.org.lb

Good science does not automatically emerge from the ritual performance of certain actions as long as we keep our beliefs at bay when following the correct procedures. Scientists' minds cannot be excluded from scientific process and it's absurd to imagine that this is what we should strive for. >

If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

#CESDurham2024 One week to go! And during CES, we will be hosting Themed Discussion Sessions, proposals for which go live now. These will be a chance to have the informal conversations had in breaks and evenings that are so useful but not always inclusive @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

🧪📗 Have you ever opened a pop-science book hoping to find phrases like "necrobestiality" and "like a kinky Dr. Strangelove" only to be disappointed? Well you won't be disappointed by my book*! 1 week until it's out in North America! Spread the word to kith and kin! *(in that specific capacity)

Registration closes for #CES2024 Conference in just THREE DAYS, don't forget to sign up here: pay.durham.ac.uk/event-durham...! Facing barriers to attend in person? We're offering on-site childcare at no extra charge, and our conference is fully hybrid if you'd rather join us online! Sign up today!

Scientific racism is a blight on science & isn’t going to go away if scientists ignore it. So I’ve teamed up w/ Magdalena Hurtado, @drsarahmyers.bsky.social & @abbeyepage.bsky.social to highlight & counter this problem by editing a special collection of Evolutionary Human Sciences. Please share CfP👇

What are some classic papers in phylogenetics? Please repost

I will never get tired of bobtail squids. Look at this guy: so small, so adorable.

Geography is not destiny: quantitative test of Diamond's axis of orientation hypothesis | "societies that share similar ecologies are more likely to share cultural traits, but Eurasian continent is not smore ecologically homogeneous than other continents" www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

If we could all avoid producing, reviewing, and reading these papers ever again, we would divert a substantial amount of talent toward productive research.

If you're a researcher from any discipline interested in culture and evolution, come join us!

It's a new year, and now is a good time as any to remind you that baby argonauts (family Argonautidae) ride around on jellyfish

Is intergroup aggression part of human nature? Or is intergroup tolerance part of human nature? Yes & yes. Human intergroup relations are profoundly flexible - & that same flexibility can influence how science is done. See my latest blog post for more: www.hbes.com/human-interg... #hbes #ehbea

Gharial appreciation post! 🐊

This week at 2pm on Thursday we'll be discussing "Universal cognitive mechanisms explain the cultural success of bloodletting" by Miton, Claidiere, & Mercier www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very cool finding! Evidence for laryngeal echolocation and cave roosting in early bats: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In dying Xitter this one didnt get much attention, which is a shame, IMO. Maybe here it will get some love? "Evolved Open-Endedness in Cultural Evolution: A New Dimension in Open-Ended Evolution Research" by Borg et al. direct.mit.edu/artl/article...

I have made a Cultural Evolution feed. Go to the link and click the 'pin' icon. (Feed is currently down, but will be working soon). Message me to be added/removed from list. You can post to list using the phrase 'cultevo' or using the spiderweb emoji: 🕸️ Please share. bsky.app/profile/did:...

My book, Modeling Social Behavior, comes out in just 5 days in North America and the EU. Zounds! It's very good and you should get it, but you don't have to take my word for it - the 1st chapter is free on the PUP website. PUP: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb... AMZN: www.amazon.com/dp/069122414...

Here's lookin at you, squid. Squid pupil shape varies- some w's, some round. It's not directly tied to who's related to who. Reef squid have w-ish pupils... so do cuttlefish. Bobtails, who are much more closely related to the cuttlefish, have rounder pupils!