Oh to be a little Tardigrade walking across a microscopic slide. 🫧🐻🧪

1/4 Cockatoos are winning the trash can war against Australians Human motivation to protect them falls five times faster than cockatoos' motivation to open them, and increasing protections makes cockatoos better at it. (paper) royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

NEW – COP30: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Belém Read here ➡️ buff.ly/3isyGpX #COP30

🚀Are you ready to shape the future of environmental and social research? ICTA-UAB is opening six fully funded PhD positions, covering topics from climate justice and urban mobility to human nutrition and sustainability data. #EnvironmentalResearch #PhDPositions www.uab.cat/web/sala-de-...

💋 Kissing is unhygienic and has no obvious reproductive benefits - but it evolved ~21 million years ago, and stuck with most great apes until today. 🧪 In fact, paper by @matildabrindle.bsky.social shows that Neanderthals and humans probably kissed each other. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Turns out gulls don't like being shouted at (or stared at!) New paper led by excellent masters students @uniexecec.bsky.social with @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

New amazing open Postdoc position, w/t opportunities to 1) get closely involved in our next @themanybirds.bsky.social study on innovation and problem-solving; 2) work with @ecobird.bsky.social on avian innovation, cognition & invasiveness. Advert: www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...

I am recruting a #postdoc for a project investigating the evolution of avian heat tolerance in @erc.europa.eu project #HotLife. Fieldwork over broad latitudinal gradients, common-garden experiments, and more. Read more and apply👇 shorturl.at/WA1Qa Would appreciate a re-post! @evoldir.bsky.social

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” 🧵

Fear of novelty varies across species & individuals, impacting adaptability & survival. @themanybirds.bsky.social @drrmiller.bsky.social &co assess #neophobia in 1400 subjects from 136 #bird species, identifying phylogenetic influences & broad ecological drivers @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4haLEsN

⚠️ PAPER ALERT! Stoked to be part of @themanybirds.bsky.social 1st paper on the evolutionary correlates of #neophobia in #birds on @plosbiology.org Contributing to this BTS project has been a truly enriching experience! 🦜🦉🐥🐧🦚🦅🦩🦆🪿 Kudos to @drrmiller.bsky.social for leading this titanic effort 💪🏻

🐦 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

Here I am. Once again. I'm out of archaeologists. We matched 576 groups w/archaeologists, leaving 13 groups unmatched. This brings me pain! We've never run out of scientists like this before. 598 requests for one category is A LOT. But still. Archaeologists 🥺 www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html

The naturalist Jane Goodall died today at 91. Hope, she argued, is not merely “passive wishful thinking” but a “crucial survival trait.” Revisit a conversation with Goodall, from 2021: nyer.cm/F55JtsS

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ A chat w/ @evoneuro.bsky.social & Georg Striedter about their new book, 'Bird Brains and Behavior.' Birds do some astonishing things. They sing, fly, migrate, cache food, and hunt in total darkness. How do their brains make all this possible? Listen: disi.org/brains-of-a-...

A new academic year is ramping up. Have you considered adding us to your syllabus? Podcasts episodes are a great way to add variety & boost engagement, and they offer a launchpad for exploration. A number of instructors have used our episodes to good effect! (Let us know if you're among them!)

How is this possible? This ant can lay eggs of two different species, birthed by the same mother

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

#Wildfires in Spain have reached record emissions in just one week according to our #CopernicusAtmosphere data. Heatwaves & drought are fueling fires, forcing evacuations & worsening air quality hundreds of km away. 🔥 Read the article for details atmosphere.copernicus.eu/spain-below-...

Seeking scientist volunteers for this fall! Want to practice science communication and help author a 🌟comic🌟 about your research? I need collaborators for the next cohort of SciComm & Comics art and design students. All countries and scientific fields eligible.

What a fantastic new paper out today in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... - and what a great resource, summarising the climatic niche of primates and tackling the hypothesis on whether primates evolved in warm tropical forests 😍

Actually my favorite bird etymology is that in 1400s England they gave human nicknames to birds (Jenny Wren, Tom Tit) but some of them stuck. Jack Daw became Jackdaw, Maggie Pie became Magpie. With Robin Redbreast they just dropped the original name of the bird entirely.

All ~40 Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Biology are available to download for free this week. Find them at www.cambridge.org/core/publica...

Then vs Now: Same chimp, same task - 17 years apart 🐒🔧 New Oxford-led research suggests that ageing can affect how wild chimpanzees use tools, though the impact varies widely between individuals. More info ⬇️ www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-07...

Our #study finds that #male #dominance isn't the norm among #primates, and starts to unravel what shapes flexibility in intersexual power paper (OA) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500405122 press release https://www.mpg.de/24986976/0630-evan-beyond-the-alpha-male-150495-x?c=2249

🔥New paper out!🔥 Here, Grant & I defend a novel, multidimensional account of behavioural innovativeness that is multilevel too. This complicates comparative claims, as the links btwn individual & group innovativeness are far from straightforward. Yes, #Neanderthals do pop up in the mix 💀🏺 #philsky

I've wanted to write this article for years. About my and other's struggles to even survive sometime in #academia. Thank you to the amazing editors at @plosbiology.org that gave me the forum to write this piece. #science

Killer whales work together to make nifty exfoliating scratchers out of kelp. This is the first time tool use has been documented for grooming in cetaceans; it's probably also the first time a tool is made that benefits two animals simultaneously. 🧪🐋 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Every country is warming. Every country is experiencing more extreme weather events because of climate change, mainly caused by burning fossil fuels. www.ShowYourStripes.info Time to #ShowYourStripes and start climate conversations to prompt actions to reduce emissions, personally & collectively.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled shitshow for a bit of delightful bird behavior.

New postdoc positions at the (DISI-affiliated) Center for Possible Minds at Indiana University. Looking for scholars interested in interdisciplinary research on the nature of biological, artificial, and collective intelligence. Please share widely! indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/29547

Each time you ask an AI chatbot a question, it sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly scarce resource: water. A 🧵on our investigation into how the data centers that power AI are increasingly being built in highly water-stressed places: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

I will forever be haunted by this footage. Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity. What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives. 🌎🦑🧪

Happy 99th birthday to the man who gave voice to the wild. 🎉 Sir David Attenborough, thank you for a lifetime dedicated to the natural world, and for sharing its story with wisdom, wonder, and grace. You've inspired generations to fall in love with nature.

Our new paper is out. We point out that large brained (and often smart) mammals and birds have evolved very different distribution of neurons numbers in the brain. This means that similar cognitive abilities have evolved in very different brains. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Time for a timeline cleanse! 🐦🐦‍⬛🕊️ (Also, can confirm that my balcony feeder in Toulouse, FR, is mainly visited by a gang of sparrows, a couple of voracious starlings, the occasional robin, different tit spp., and even a black redstart!) 🔭🪶

🥳Good news! Last night, EU Parliament and Council agreed on a revised 🧸Toy Safety law — including an extension of the generic restriction mechanism to endocrine disruptors, and a ban on bisphenols and #PFAS. #ToxicFreeToys #ToxicFreeFuture

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀 Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯 A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛 Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

🐭 Ronin, a HeroRAT trained by APOPO, has found 109 landmines in Cambodia🌏more than any rat before. 🕒 He clears an area the size of a tennis court in 30 mins (humans need 4 days) His record-breaking nose just made it into the Guinness Book. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... #Wildlife #GuinnessWorldRecord

Happy to have a new piece in @science.org with my friend Lydia where we draw attention to the significance of animal material culture for understanding human technical evolution and why we should digitally preserve and protect primate tools and tool use sites. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The loss of a legend- Kanzi, the language-competent bonobo, has died age 44. Kanzi was exceptional in so many ways and offered us profound insights into the linguistic & cognitive capacities of great apes. He has taught us so much and will be hugely missed. www.apeinitiative.org/remembering-...

Iguanas rafted more than 8,000 km from North America to Fiji: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... #biogeography #phylogenetics #genomics #ecology #evolution

#Atapuerca reescribe la historia del primer poblamiento europeo El @iphes-cerca.bsky.social y el @cenieh.bsky.social lideran un artículo publicado en Nature sobre el estudio de #Pink, un fragmento facial hallado en la Sima del Elefante.

On top of total capture of COP by the fossil fuel industry, we now have "Amazon forest felled to build road for climate summit." At what point do we acknowledge what is now plainly obvious: that this is not the solution, but a big part of the problem, a coverup for BAU? www.bbc.com/news/article...

🐺 EU moves to weaken wolf protection, NGOs warn of wider threats to nature 🍃 After 18 months campaigning, @ec.europa.eu now seeks to open up Europe's oldest environmental law to downgrade wolf protection. This move sets a bad precedent of political games trumping science and public opinion.

Voici le portrait de 4 femmes qui se sont fait spolier de leur découverte. ➡️ https://l.franceculture.fr/vra

In Toulouse 🇨🇵 we also #StandUpForScience ✊🏼🧬📢 @standupforscifr.bsky.social @standupforscience.bsky.social

Un equipo de investigadores españoles ha identificado 27 herramientas de hueso de elefante e hipopótamo en la garganta de Olduvai, en Tanzania, que demuestran que la fabricación de instrumentos con este material comenzó un millón de años antes de lo que se pensaba