Had fun with this one! In which I discuss: dolphins, elephants, marmosets, teknonymy, necronymy, reciprocal names in New Guinea, nominative determinism, the Bob-Kirk effect, the face-name-matching effect, name signs, toponyms, dog names, name uniqueness, alexinomia, toponyms, name taboos, etc.

Our new study shows that cats’ purrs are more individually distinct than their meows and suggests that domestication has made the meows of cats more variable than those of cheetah, cougar & Co. Check it out! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Come and work with us in our new home @bristolbiosci.bsky.social ! This fully funded PhD opportunity is open to anyone interested in spiders/eyes/light pollution/evolution/development! 🕷️👀 ⏰Deadline 15th December, online info event TODAY @2pm! Link in the PhD advert👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Origins of language, one of humanity’s most distinctive traits, may be best explained as a unique convergence of multiple capacities each with its own evolutionary history, involving intertwined roles of biology & culture. This framing can expand research horizons. A 🧵 on our @science.org paper.🧪1/n

📢Two fully-funded #PhD opportunities to work with us: Topic: Social monitoring & manipulation UK-domiciled black-heritage scheme: tinyurl.com/aja54nr6 NERC DLTP: tinyurl.com/4jfy47pp Cosupervisors: #PatrickKennedy @ljnbrent.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social #bioacoustics #mammals #fieldwork

More cool rats vs. bat content from both my lab and the Yovel Lab in this National Geographic article. I'm glad to report that cosmic justice has been achieved... and the bats won :-) www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Remember… Bats aren’t spooky, they’re adorable 💕Here, an Ectophylla alba pup chilling under a leaf tent gets a surprise visit… from a katydid. Happy Halloween 🦇🦇🦇

(Not so) Happy Halloween! 🦇🐀🎃 Researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin documented brown rats catching #bats in mid-air at Segeberger Kalkberg, Northern Germany. A rare look at invasive species impacting urban wildlife. 🌍 @berlinbatlab.bsky.social 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.ge...

Brown rats are preying on bats at urban hibernation sites – even snatching them mid-air. Conservation efforts must include non-native rodent control at key bat roosts. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our latest research highlights the importance of dry grasslands for bats 🦇🦇🦇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This morning @dzg2025berlin.bsky.social, Mirjam Knörnschild gave a fantastic talk about social communication in Saccopteryx bilineata 🦇 including dialects, acoustically-based individual recognition. @berlinbatlab.bsky.social #dzg2025 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Dan Riskin from The Bat Signal made a really cool video about our recent publication. youtube.com/@followtheba...

Our recent study on cooperation in spectral bats is featured on CNN. This is the first publication of my PhD student Marisa Tietge - way to go! 💕🦇💕🦇💕🦇💕🦇💕🦇💕🦇

New publication from my lab: Vampyrum spectrum, the Neotropics' largest carnivorous bat, is very cooperative. These gentle apex predators regularly provide prey for family member – documented in the wild for the first time. doi.org/10.1371/jour...

New paper out! We found that in pipistrelle bats, social vocalizations carry a stronger phylogenetic signal than echolocation calls, suggesting the former evolve more slowly, while the latter remains flexible and shaped by the environment. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In the field in Abruzzo National Park, watching Daubenton’s bats hunt over water at night. Excited to co-supervise Chiara Belli’s PhD together with Danilo Russo from the Animal Ecology and Evolution Lab in Italy. Chiara studies altitudinal segregation in bats and how climate change affects it 🦇🦇🦇

Bats are underrated.

Danilo Russo and I have received a grant from MfN Berlin to study how climate change affects bat pup survival. As Southern Europe swelters under record-breaking temperatures, we are investigating how extreme heat turns safe roosts into death traps – and how to prevent that.

2025. Acoustic romance in old church attics: Greater mouse-eared bats display lek mating system phys.org/news/2025-06...

Last night, I had the privilege of delivering a keynote speech at the Locus awards. You can view the speech and read the full text here. stone-soup.ghost.io/hammer-speech/

Behavioral ecology can inform conservation – and male bats must be part of the picture! Mating roosts are vital for reproduction, so they should receive the same protection as nursery roosts. Plus, males yodel there...😅 nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Our latest paper just came out. We found that more social parrots have a better vocabulary and females produce more variable call types than males. You can read more here: doi.org/10.1098/rsos.... (PS: the bird in the picture is not a parrot but the cover of RSOS.)

Folks, Sara Niksic / Inner Child is fundraising for the next iteration of her phenomenal whale song/music science communication project - please consider a small donation to help make this happen 🎶🦑🐋 whydonate.com/en/fundraisi...

Check out the beautiful book Smithsonian Kids published about our research on babbling baby bats! Illustrated by Gavin Scott and written by Paige Towler together with the Smithsonian Bat Lab. Although it was published last year, I only received my copy a few days ago — and I’m completely smitten! ♥️

“[This]finding challenges the notion of a strictly human-specific Arcuate Fasciculus morphology and suggests that language-related neural specialisation in humans likely evolved through gradual evolutionary strengthening of a pre-existing connection, rather than arising de novo” 🧪🧠 👇

The inaugural Coller-Dolittle Prize was awarded to the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, scientists Laela Sayigh, Vincent Janik, Frants Jensen, and Peter Tyack, for their long-term field research on dolphin whistle communication. Kudos to the whole team! www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Ever wondered how baby bats learn to sing? 🦇🎶 Turns out, their moms support their practice! Our study shows that maternal feedback leads to: More vocal practice Higher song syllable versatility More mature song syllables 🔗https://elifesciences.org/articles/99474 elifesciences.org/digests/9947...

eLife wrote a beautiful dispatch about our study on maternal influences on vocal development in bat pups. Check it out! elifesciences.org/digests/9947...

Mother Bats Shape Their Pups’ Voices Vocal learning isn’t just about listening—it’s about interactions! Mother bats play a key role in shaping how their pups learn to communicate, showing how important early-life interactions are. doi.org/10.7554/eLif... @eLife.bsky.social @ahanaaurora.bsky.social

Join the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University for a virtual event on 15th May 2025 at 2PM BST to award the first winner of the Coller Dolittle Challenge for Interspecies Two-Way Communication. Register here: zoom.us/webinar/regi...

New OA 🦇 research 📄 Shorter and Warmer Winters Expand the Hibernation Area of Bats in Europe onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🐳 UPCOMING BOOK ALERT 🐬 The Evolution of Cetacean Societies Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @stephanielking.bsky.social and myself Preorder available now press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... #whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour

A thread explaining our new discovery about humpback whale song published today in Science... We found key statistical properties that characterise all human languages in another species for the first time. We have more in common with whales than we previously thought! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants. www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

New paper: Culture and conservation in baleen whales @ellengarland.bsky.social, @petercorkeron.bsky.social, Mike Noad, Briana Abrahms, @jennyallen13.bsky.social, @rconstantine.bsky.social, @lrendell.bsky.social, Renata Sousa-Lima, Kate Stafford, @emma-carroll.bsky.social doi.org/10.1098/rstb...

👋 Looking forward to the 117th Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society. Please like and share 🤩

How Do Bats Find Artificial Roosts? Surprisingly, our study found that bats' previous experience with artificial roosts mattered more than enhanced detectability! Read more in our new paper! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... Photo by Anja Bergmann

Important study yielding new insights into the deep roots of aspects of our communication system/#language— @berthetmelissa.bsky.social M. Surbeck and S. Townsend did great work to reveal semantic composition in vocal combinations in bonobos. 🧪 Out in @science.org : www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dan Riskin from The Bat Signal created an awesome video about our latest article on individual recognition in bats. Check it out! youtu.be/9ihFaauZjIo?...

Who is calling? Bats outsmart deception by solving sensory conflicts www.cell.com/current-biol...

PhD opportunity in the thread!

We're looking for a PhD candidate who will characterise what echolocating agents do in groups using a multi-sensor rigs in the field. Wouldn't it be cool to finally figure out how bats manage their calling and flying - and even reconstruct what they may be hearing to make these decisions? 5/n

Babies learn best from those who respond to their babbling! 👶✨ @juliaavenditti.bsky.social, @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social et al. (2025): infants form stronger social expectations when their babbling gets a timely response—even from a robot car! 🤖🚗 #infancypapers #EarlyYears doi.org/10.1111/infa...

We fret about this in our new course. thebullshitmachines.com/lesson-9-blu...

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com

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...

Bats' vocalizations can reveal their personalities Bold, exploratory, and proactive individuals were more likely to produce social calls – and more agitated bats called even more! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... Photo by Michael Stifter