A fun study on territorial, often-solitary wall lizards becoming more gregarious and easygoing in the cities where they thrive. Social tolerance begets success 🦎✌🏽 By @averymaune.bsky.social et al. in @royalsocietypublishing.org: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

People who know reptiles well say they don't only experience fleeting pains and pleasures, but also lasting emotional states: happiness & sadness, or at least good & bad moods. But how do you show this in a scientific way? My latest for @nytimes.com on a clever @coldbloodedcog.bsky.social study:

People who know reptiles well say they don't only experience fleeting pains and pleasures, but also lasting emotional states: happiness & sadness, or at least good & bad moods. But how do you show this in a scientific way? My latest for @nytimes.com on a clever @coldbloodedcog.bsky.social study:

Inspiring text about how seeing others with wonder invites us to understand them more deeply and treat them with greater care.

Our paper on 🌱🦧ANIMAL MEDICINE🐜🍄 has been accepted for publication in Philosophy of Science! You can find the accepted version here, open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I wish publications would have dedicated Nature sections rather than lumping the entire living world under Science or maybe Environment. IMHO this would be fabulously successful.

"There was something unusual about the beams: Sparkling white points of light spiraled slowly inside them, hundreds if not thousands, almost like confetti, but confetti wouldn’t have been visible from that distance. It also wouldn’t have risen. A few people said the lights made them think of souls."

Thought experiment: If this happened now instead of the 1970s, would the turtles still be welcomed? Or would some people label them non-native and warn about their potential invasiveness?

Thought experiment: If this happened now instead of the 1970s, would the turtles still be welcomed? Or would some people label them non-native and warn about their potential invasiveness?

An elder smallmouth. The largest I've seen; the sunfish were good-sized adults, and the bass was a log compared to them. Wouldn't be surprised if he was a state record, but to brutalize such dignity, grace, and wisdom—and then celebrate the 'record'—is anathema. May he never be caught.

People "are navigating food deserts, low wages, high rent and broken social safety nets. Until we actually face and deal with those realities, no amount of ingredient bans or individual behavior change will Make America Healthy Again." fromthescienceclass.substack.com/p/twenty-dol...

An elder smallmouth. The largest I've seen; the sunfish were good-sized adults, and the bass was a log compared to them. Wouldn't be surprised if he was a state record, but to brutalize such dignity, grace, and wisdom—and then celebrate the 'record'—is anathema. May he never be caught.

We published this great piece by @jesslsr.bsky.social on what a switch from factory farm chicken to regenerative might look like (models looked at organic & free range). Americans would have to go from eating 100 lbs per year to 63. But what if people were willing? sentientmedia.org/could-the-us...

"Disney’s ethos began to change in the 1990s . . . but only after the economic shock of the pandemic did the company seem to more fully abandon any pretense of being a middle-class institution." —Daniel Currell for @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/o...

How much protein should you consume? erictopol.substack.com/p/our-preocc...

Thanks to faculty at SUNY-ESF, Gonzaga, Fort Lewis College, U of Maine, and elsewhere who've assigned my books this semester. Still time to avail yourselves of this offer! Your class may thank you. Or not. But probably.

On the latest episode of Knowing Animals, I speak to @thomvandooren.bsky.social about his 2023 @mitpress.bsky.social book A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions. The episode is available free below, or in all the usual podcast places. knowinganimals.libsyn.com/episode-238-...

Hello, professors & teachers! Can't believe it's syllabus season already. If you assign Meet the Neighbors—perhaps for your human-wildlife conflict, animal studies, animal intelligence, or environmental ethics course?—I'd be glad to Zoom in for a Q&A. Ping me if you're interested!

Hello, professors & teachers! Can't believe it's syllabus season already. If you assign Meet the Neighbors—perhaps for your human-wildlife conflict, animal studies, animal intelligence, or environmental ethics course?—I'd be glad to Zoom in for a Q&A. Ping me if you're interested!

The vast majority of people want nature protected. But across the world, we see the opposite happen. Democracy, my ass.

I would disentangle these. Condeming the administration is one thing; condemning culture is another. For the latter, if one's goal is to rally the troops, condemnation is great. If one's goal is to change minds and society, condemnation seems pretty unhelpful.

Spotted at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History bookstore. Ball's in your court, @amnh.org!!!

Ignore the stories about how terrible spotted lanternflies are. If you own a vineyard, they're a pest. If not, they’re no big deal: a new ecosystem member, eaten by other animals. You don't need to feel bad about them, or squash them, or cut down their trees. You have permission to enjoy them.

Ignore the stories about how terrible spotted lanternflies are. If you own a vineyard, they're a pest. If not, they’re no big deal: a new ecosystem member, eaten by other animals. You don't need to feel bad about them, or squash them, or cut down their trees. You have permission to enjoy them.

Fairlife, a brand that didn't exist before 2012, is now the 2nd most popular milk in the US. It's a reflection of how dairy manages to continually rebrand & reinvent itself. But the reality behind Fairlife, like all dairy, is an unmitigated horror show www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Chimpanzees favour the colour red. Junglefowl prefer symmetry. Our shared capacity for aesthetic pleasure is cause for wonder @brandonkeim.bsky.social

Tap Mun version of traffic jam: sharing the path with the real locals 🐄🐖

"Animal trusteeship is not conventional advocacy, and it’s not traditional wildlife management. It is something distinct — defined by a fiduciary duty to act solely in the best interests of the animals represented."

I love this article by @brandonkeim.bsky.social asking if animals can appreciate beauty. psyche.co/ideas/what-i...

Thrilled to have an excerpt from STRATA in Rolling Stone today! Fulfilling my dreams of casting geologists as the rockstars of the scientific world: www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult... Two more weeks til we launch the book! Preorder here: wwnorton.com/books/978132...

Our latest podcast features the story of Cosmos, a deformed cormorant who’d groom his rescuer’s sideburns (it was the ’80s) and turn the pages of his science journals. @brandonkeim.bsky.social & @lisamargonelli.bsky.social talk animal personhood, policy, and cormorants: issues.org/brandon-keim...

I feel trapped between people who are terrified to use LLMs, and people who are terrified not to. Can we please bring back boredom and indifference when it comes to overhyped new tech?

"That everything has to be in competition with each other is not necessarily true. Everything has to work out how to work *with* other things…. That’s what people don’t tend to get about Darwinian survival of the fittest." I talked to @aptshadow.bsky.social for @nautil.us: nautil.us/what-we-misu...

"That everything has to be in competition with each other is not necessarily true. Everything has to work out how to work *with* other things…. That’s what people don’t tend to get about Darwinian survival of the fittest." I talked to @aptshadow.bsky.social for @nautil.us: nautil.us/what-we-misu...

This @betsymason.bsky.social post about the benefits of making tiny friends was just what I needed today. www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/06/11/t...

As a bonus, we'll also become a nation of people with legible penmanship who do not gaze upon their own handwriting with mild shame.

A female Western Gull was recorded riding 150km in a garbage truck from San Francisco to a compost facility in Central CA, probably to forage. TWICE. An innovator, an icon, a genius. This is one of my favorite @waterbirdsociety.bsky.social papers I've ever handled as managing editor #ornithology

"... all of the world’s wild mammals would meet just two weeks of our demand for meat. Within a fortnight, they’d all be gone, and their populations would not rebuild." @hannahritchie.bsky.social on the idea that hunting is sustainable: www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/wild-mamma...

Remember how miserable it was to wear a mask all day? Even outside, in the hot sun? Now imagine doing that every day of your life. Who could possibly think that was a great idea ... oh, of course. The guy now designing wearable AI devices.

Read more in the article by @hannahritchie.bsky.social: ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or...

If you’re free this evening at 7pm ET, come on by! I’ll be reading from Meet the Neighbors and having a conversation with the fine people at PAN Works, an ethics & policy think tank devoted to the wellbeing of animals. Registration (it’s free): us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

1/2 Episodic memory in parasitoid wasps Although traditionally associated with large-brained animals, Ammophila pubescens females have memory of the three key elements: who, when and where characteristic of episodic memory. (paper) www.cell.com/current-biol...

I would be incredibly surprised if we didn't find some problems with some additives. But the idea that eliminating them will improve public health is, I think, wishful thinking. If we take them out, Big Food will use whatever tools are left to sell food designed to be overeaten.