Update: the Buckquoy Pictish site and surrounding coast looking their best this afternoon 🏺

Excellent thread on new dates from the #Orkney Pictish Buckquoy site, 5 minutes from my house. If you’re visiting the Norse settlement (or looking for puffins) on the Brough of Birsay, this site is beside the carpark before you walk across to the Brough at low tide 🏺🧪🌊

Looking for a different gift idea this year? How about a #kakapo adoption? Adoptions are open again until 25th Nov, with postage or email options. These fund a significant proportion of our programme and make a real difference to the #conservation work we do. Thanks! www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/kak...

Our seminar on animal agency, between biology and philosophy, is back ! Check out the programme for the next sessions here ! We meet on the second Wednesday of each month, on Zoom, from 4 to 5 PM (UK time). You’re very welcome to join ! :) www.animalinventiveness.com/post/seminar...

What spooky #Orkney site is this? It’s the view inside House 7 at Skara Brae, the one we keep locked. The only two skeletons found at this ancient village were under the wall to the left. Look closely to see Neolithic carvings in the stone, made over 4500 years ago….if you dare #Halloween 🏺💀

Brilliant new study (preprint) led by @noraslania.bsky.social on how wild eastern chimpanzees observe each other. 'Peering'—or close-range attentive observation—happens in all kinds of contexts and esp. for young chimps, opening the door to new cultural traits 🧪👀 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

#CrowCoG is hiring🚨MULTIPLE PAID RESEARCH ASSISTANT POSITIONS 🚨for our 2026 field season (May - Sep)! Field and aviary-based positions - come help us study the remarkable tool-making New Caledonian crows. Apply here: bit.ly/3WlxxHE

This time of year, spiders receive a lot of attention for their creepier qualities. But researchers value them year-round for pulling off impressive cognitive feats with very little brains.

"Cretaceous Thriller" Sinocalliopteryx: the bird-swallowing dinosaur 🪶

Remember the poster inspired by stained glass? Well, I decided to actually try making a mini version, in real glass. I haven't cut or solder glass in my entire life. Maybe starting with 32 pieces was a bad idea. I forgot I could’ve just painted glass instead. It’s awful. I love it. #sciart #art

At some point I will do the 'what I had out this year' roundup... two novellas, some longer stories, some shorter, and this one, my shortest! EVERYONE KEEPS SAYING PROBABLY is free to read at @psychopomp.com :) psychopomp.com/everyone-kee...

All papers in Royal Society journals are free to access from 20-26 October for #OAweek 🧪📚 Here's links to a few things I've published with them over the years... royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1... royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1... royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1...

In a paper under review @abigaildesmond.bsky.social and I argue that self-directed tool use should be the most common form of novel (and possibly temporary) tool use, because of the immediacy of the feedback and the stability of the self as an environment. Fingers crossed it survives review! 🧪🪮🐼

20 years ago today I was teaching a tutorial at UQ when I heard my friend and mentor Dr Tom Loy had died. He was 63. Tom was a pioneer in biomolecular archaeology, finding blood and other organic materials on ancient tools. But he never rebuilt an entire DNA strand, as #JurassicPark noted 🏺🧪🧬🦖🦕

Aurora/dragon over my #Orkney house tonight 🧪🔭

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/s... An unknown sea otter was spotted stealing surfboards at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz this week. Is 841 back to her old ways or have other otters learned to hang 10? Check out my latest for @nytimes.com

Delighted to co-author this piece with Leonie Bossert on the potential benefits and risks of using AI to communicate with animals! 🐋

Violence, scientific DRAMA, and misunderstanding! Who first asked if woodpeckers get headaches, or if rams are immune to brain damage? New Paper! I trace the history of human thought on brain injury in head-hitting animals, and it's a wild ride. 🧪 🏺 A thread - 1/🧵 doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...

🖐️ New study says our robust cousins Paranthropus had hands that could use tools 1.5 million years ago. This is not a surprise. Monkeys have tool-using hands, so do sea otters (and crabs and octopuses if we stretch what makes a hand). Bird beaks/elephant trunks/ant mandibles are fine for tool use 🏺🧪

Feels like it’s been a while since I put my workplace here. This is Skara Brae right now 🏺🧪🌊

🐦 Exciting news! Our new paper is out in PLOS Biology: “A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia.” Led by the #ManyBirds Project - 129 researchers, 82 institutions, 24 countries 🌍 🔗 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... @themanybirds.bsky.social

Feels like it’s been a while since I put my workplace here. This is Skara Brae right now 🏺🧪🌊

Kudos to the editors @funecology.bsky.social for their suitably October cover 🕸️🎃🐠 This toothy alien is a Threadfin dragonfish (Echiostoma barbatum), a deep-sea hunter from the actual twilight zone

#Palaeoanthropology in space. The human urge to name things is ridiculously strong 🔭

One of the risks of bowerbirds sharing space with a university - sometimes scientific equipment (and samples) get pinched! Soy sauce containers also seem to be popular

Also managed to track down some immature male great bowerbirds today, they were displaying at trees to get some practice in (paper on this shorturl.at/jqOQt). Found these two sites due to the birds making a right racket!

The origins and functions of bowers in the Bowerbirds: a review and synthesis | doi.org/10.1080/0158... | Emu | #ornithology 🪶

Reminder to vote each day (until 15 October) for Baudin's black cockatoo as Australia’s bird of the year. Its jarrah habitat in Western Australia is about to be cleared for bauxite mining. Every bit of attention this endangered bird gets could help it continue to exist 🪶 🇦🇺🧪

For #StandingStoneSunday the magnificent Sueno’s Stone. Likely named for the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, but dating to the late 800s Pictish Fortriu kingdom. It’s over 6 metres tall, with scenes of battle and beheading. The base has sword cuts from warriors pledging to their king 🏺🧪👑 📷 29 September 2025

For #StandingStoneSunday the magnificent Sueno’s Stone. Likely named for the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, but dating to the late 800s Pictish Fortriu kingdom. It’s over 6 metres tall, with scenes of battle and beheading. The base has sword cuts from warriors pledging to their king 🏺🧪👑 📷 29 September 2025

Remember to hydra-te 🐉 🐉 🐉

Sad to report that we've lost another #kakapo, and a particularly significant one. Solstice was the last kākāpō rediscovered, found on Rakiura in 1997. She died on the weekend as a result of complications from the #disease cloacitis. There are now 237 kākāpō left. #conservation #parrots #birds

Jane Goodall was also the first to bring attention to wild tool-using vultures, which she spotted randomly one day while out driving. These birds use stones to break into ostrich eggs. Be observant like Jane and who knows what you’ll see! 🧪🥚

Jane Goodall convinced a reluctant world that apes use tools, then became one of the great environmentalists. She never gave up hope for a better world, and was an inspiration to all who met her, including children worldwide. Thank you Jane.

My new favourite place from late medieval/Middle Ages Scotland. The Chapter House at Elgin Cathedral, rebuilt in the 1400s 🏺 📷 29 September 2025

Your daily reminder that tool use is not about ‘intelligence’ or having hands. It’s about a coincidence of object and actor with time to explore and a need to fill. Whether tool use spreads can depend on social stuff like who’s watching, but isolated tool use springs up everywhere all the time 🏺🐮🛠️🧪

Your daily reminder that tool use is not about ‘intelligence’ or having hands. It’s about a coincidence of object and actor with time to explore and a need to fill. Whether tool use spreads can depend on social stuff like who’s watching, but isolated tool use springs up everywhere all the time 🏺🐮🛠️🧪

Night sky in the Cairngorms, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🔭🪐 (📷 yesterday)

#ESHE2025 Rhianna Drummond-Clarke ‘First documentation and quantification of wild chimpanzee rock climbing’ Camera traps, Issa Valley TZ & Moyen Bafing, Guinea chimps Rock vs tree climbing: more dynamic movements, biomech diff locomotor modes, reaching further- role of uneven substrates! Amazing 😍

📢JOB alert📢 Application for the camp manager position at the @taichimpproject.bsky.social is open now. We seek a new camp manager starting on January 1, 2026, for 2+1 years (3rd year optional) working with and for wild chimpanzees in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire.👇 emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/I...

This is the way it was 🏺

A new fossil reconstruction implies our lineage was separate by a million years ago 🏺💀🧪 ‘The origin of the longi clade can be inferred to be about 1.2 Ma, slightly older than the Yunxian fossils. The origin of the sapiens clade is estimated to be about 1.02 Ma, also close to the age of Yunxian’

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

#PossumArchaeology 🏺

Somehow, somehow the knowledge of where to go and when to leave is encoded in the genes of the green darner dragonfly. I found this one, a male judging from his neon blue abdomen, sitting on the concrete outside a store in a strip mall in Atlanta. He likely hatched in a pond in Quebec or NY 🧵...

Oh. That doesn’t seem right

Coos in the mist 🐄 Sunday sunrise in Birsay, #Orkney

Lizards are famous for their ability to detach their tails under stress. But how do they manage to drop them so quickly, and why do they never seem to accidentally lose their tails if they come off so easily? 1/8 🧪⚛️