New paper! We use simulations to test received wisdom on the observational sampling method to use and find that Altmann 1974 was right all along (never bet against Jeanne!). Focal follows capture rare, fleeting behaviours, scans captures long, common behaviours. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And if you're into social networks and how to analyse them, check out the entire Special Issue of Animal Behaviour on Multilayer Networks, guest edited by @grf.bsky.social @sandrateles-esmag.bsky.social and Cristina Jasso 🤩

It takes decades to see how climatic cycles interact with the social dynamics of animal societies. Now a 33-year dataset of 12 capuchin groups + satellite environmental data has an answer. @livingingroups.bsky.social @oddjacobson.bsky.social @bjjbarrett.bsky.social www.ab.mpg.de/857503/news_...

Apes, monkeys and their relatives that live in despotic societies are less likely to clown around as adults go.nature.com/48vHVTL

@projectceti.bsky.social used drones to capture the first-ever footage of a sperm whale giving birth! Multiple female whales from different family groups helped the mother through her labor, making this the first documented "assisted birth" outside primates! 🧪 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

New OA paper @royalsocietypublishing.org: What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation? royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... Lovely collab with @lirsamuni.bsky.social Martin Surbeck and Richard Connor.

Cogratulations to this research team for their important work:

My interview with @manymindspod.bsky.social! Come for a deep dive into the evolution of kissing 💋, stay for the earth-shattering insights 🤯 "fish don't run" 🐠🏃 "monkeys tend to loll around quite a lot" 🙈 "chimps have moved on to grass-in-bumhole behaviour" 🍑🌱 disi.org/origins-of-t...

Imagination in bonobos! I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

New episode, first of 2026!! 🎉🎙️ A deep dive into metaphor with @sflusberg.bsky.social! Metaphors delight, provoke, captivate, shock, and galvanize us. What does it say about the human mind that we simply can't escape them—and frankly don't want to? Listen: disi.org/the-aura-of-...

🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

I'm really happy to share this paper showing a relationship between social integration and offspring survival in female spider monkeys. I was lucky to work on this with Cristina Jasso, @grf.bsky.social and a great group of collaborators. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A new issue of #PhilTransB expands the field of cultural evolution and shows why it matters for today’s biggest challenges - from #inequality and cooperation to #conservation and education. Read articles (all #OA): buff.ly/S44vv6l

Hello dream project! Who doesn't want to work on social dynamics in the cutest birds with the incredible Liz Hobson?!?! (No one, thats who)

We have a new paper out in @cp-iscience.bsky.social reporting that more socially integrated female chimpanzees have lower offspring mortality 🧪 #evosky #primates #primatology #anthropology www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ever feel like our culture has gone wrong? If so, we're maybe not alone. Check out this mind-bending story of the emergence of a behavioral tradition where capuchin monkeys abduct infant howler monkeys led by @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social and @bjjbarrett.bsky.social of @livingingroups.bsky.social !

🧪 ETHOLOGY: Baby elephants build social bonds early! 🐘💞 Revathe & Vidya show that Asian elephant calves form differentiated relationships early on: they interact closely with mothers and “escorts” who provide allomaternal care, while largely avoiding other females. Read: doi.org/10.1111/eth....

New study from #UniKonstanz @cbehav.bsky.social and @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social shows: animal swarms don’t need to follow fixed rules; their coordination emerges from brain dynamics. Flexible “ring attractor” networks create complexity from simplicity: https://t1p.de/4c6cd#UniKonstanz@icouzin.bsky.social

We are hiring – postdoc position exploring how kinship shapes social ageing in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social and Prof Rufus Johnstone (Cambridge) starts 1st April 2026 and ends 31st March 2029. Apps close 2nd Feb. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPZ788/p...

And our work is one of three papers published in Current Biology showing importance of social dynamics on sleep. Commentary here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Our paper is published today in Current Biology and is featured on the cover! We report a neat, and somewhat counter-intuitive, finding: higher-ranking baboons get less and more interrupted night-time rest.

Excited to introduce the Latent Layers Framework – now out in @behavecol.bsky.social – to help think through when and why network differences confound inference in (comparative) social network analysis! 🧵 tinyurl.com/3k3yahwy

Our new review of beluga sociality and culture just dropped at Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! Some of our key conclusions summarized 🧵 doi.org/10.1007/s002... @marine-valeria.bsky.social @dmennill.bsky.social @raincoast.org

Spider monkeys use collective intelligence to find food: www.earth.com/news/spider-...

🐒🧠 New paper in npj Complexity: complementary information sharing in fission-fusion dynamics. Video explainer: youtu.be/PIAhcLWqsO8?... Full paper (open access): doi.org/10.1038/s442... Higher-order spatial networks enable distributed foraging knowledge in heterogeneous environments. 👇

#Wisdom is back! The world’s oldest known living banded bird, Mōlī (Laysan albatross) queen, has returned to Kuailhelani (Midway Atoll). #Birds

𝗗𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝘁𝘀 & 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗮𝘁𝘇 will give their first-ever 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗸𝗲𝘆𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 at NetSci 2026! Their groundbreaking work has shaped how we understand networks, & this session will be a highlight of NetSci’s 20th anniversary. Call for abstracts: tinyurl.com/3tbj2v83 Call for satellites: tinyurl.com/42sru6kz

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...

Behavioral data can be very detailed but are usually aggregated and normalized in ways that smother the dynamics. Ben wrote a continuous-time Markov model to improve on this, and also wrote simulations for exploring and validating pipelines. All the code is here: github.com/BenKawam/ASN...

New episode!! 🎙️📣 A conversation with @manvir.bsky.social about the many faces of shamanism. Shamanism is not a relic of the past or a curio from far-off lands—it's alive and well, all around the world. The roots of shamanism, after all, lie within us. Listen: disi.org/the-shaman-w...

Reasonable, minimal collective action for a better scholarly publishing ecosystem

🧪New preprint: “Uncovering complementary information sharing in spider monkey collective foraging using higher-order spatial networks” in collaboration with Ross Walker, @mattjsilk.bsky.social, Denis Boyer and @sandrateles-esmag.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2505.01167 🧵 1/5

Great talk by Hal Whitehead about sperm whale clans yesterday. If you missed it, then watch it here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQbA...

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge. Rumi, Sufi scholar and poet (1207–1273)