My takeaway from #co32026: "Nothing in cognition makes sense except in the light of adaptive function."

Hmm that link seems to be broken. Here is another! www.cell.com/current-biol...

I was just forwarded communications from Duke admins that this is true: one of the largest and most active herbaria in the United States is being closed in the middle of an extinction crisis, because Duke leadership does not wish to support the infrastructure costs.

New publication on maternal care by cougars and the influence it has on kitten survival rates! TLDR: more experience + more care = better kitten survival. Details @ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪

The European Conference on Behavioural Biology will be hosted by the Animal Behaviour group at the University of Zurich. Abstracts opened today! Visit www.ecbb.uzh.ch for all the details.

🚀 🎉 🚀 Applications for the 2024 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!! Interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply! disi.org

My lab at University of Alaska Fairbanks is recruiting an NSF-funded postdoc to study the evolution of ice-binding proteins in intertidal species. Field and labwork in beautiful places! 2 years of support at $67K/yr. Applications accepted until 3/16. Please share! careers.alaska.edu/en-us/job/52...

Here's the winning story: www.allaboutbirds.org/news/harsh-m.... Now off to rewrite the bio I use for everything to start out "Rebecca Heisman is an award-winning science writer..."

New article out on curiosity in meerkats and other mongooses (and how habituation towards humans affects multiple aspects of exploration in contrasting ways).

As jobs are coming out and folks are applying, here's your regular reminder of lots of examples of successful job apps (mostly research academia but also industry, PUI, gov). And if you've gotten a job recently, please consider contributing! github.com/RILAB/statem...

I described these estimates last week in my intro lecture for the human evolution core course at my institute. Surprises a lot of ppl. And odd for a primate to be ~half mammal biomass, given how insignificant other primates are. More bat biomass than non-human primate. Humans are weed monkeys.

New publication on the use of parametric speakers (such as the SoundLazer) for animal communication studies.