Work is now well underway to assess if animals have the capacity for flow state (optimal activity-based experience). What a dream team of collaborators - Shivani Patel Alex Taylor Sara Hintze and Jeroen Lemmens (not on BlueSky yet!) spanning species, continents, settings, disciplines & approaches.

Fancy joining us? Check out this excellent @royalsociety.org Career Development Fellowship: royalsociety.org/grants/caree... If you're eligible & are interested in social behaviour, vocal communication or anthropogenic impacts on wildlife, feel free to DM or email me. @bristolbiosci.bsky.social

I'll be a speaker at this wonderful in-person event at the Zoological Society of London on 30 September! Tickets are FREE!

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

I'll be a speaker at this wonderful in-person event at the Zoological Society of London on 30 September! Tickets are FREE!

Applications open for fully funded 4-yr positions in the unique interdisciplinary program of the @maxplanck.de School of Cognition. Pursue a passion for science at the forefront of fundamental & applied research, mentored by a network of world renowned researchers.🧪 cognition.maxplanckschools.org/en

It turns out an ideal place to rest and mend a broken foot is the Norwegian fjords (a little tricky to get there but worth it!)

Further proof that quolls rule! 🌿🧪

Director at Max Planck - a unique position! The Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships is open now and can be submitted by the 31st of October 2025. ➡️ mpg.de/directors - Please share the Open Call among potential candidates.

A large benefit of an industry (enviro NGO) background is being able to get research done on a creative shoestring - begging, borrowing & building equipment/consumables. In academia, a large downside is trying to scale up operations & impacts in an equally dire funding landscape. Erm, how??!

Nice mention of our Communications and Public Affairs Director @susierabin.bsky.social in this article from @audubon.org about the Gulls Eating Stuff citizen science project 👇 www.audubon.org/magazine/res... #GullsEatingStuff #CitizenScience

1 To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised! 🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

First copies of my book are here!! As a new faculty member, I realized that in addition to my research job, I also had a leadership job…and I wasn’t prepared for that. This book is the guide I wish I’d had then, with the goal of helping others now.   jenheemstra.com/book

The #CRAB2025 🦀 programme is out! Join us in Siena on Sept 3 at #CCS25 for the 2nd edition of the Complexity Research in Animal Behaviour satellite 🐜🐦🦋🐳🐙🐝 🧑‍🏫 Invited talks by S. Melillo & P. Bartashevich Full programme: sites.google.com/view/crab202... @jbbrask.bsky.social @saraneven.bsky.social

Cambridge Elements are free to download until 7/25-check out my little book How To Study Animal Minds. I had fun writing this one, and I'll never forget how nervous I was in front of a bunch of scientist friends, including Sara Shettleworth, hearing their thoughts on the draft! tinyurl.com/3yy6a52c

Such a pleasure to attend the Diverse Intelligences Summit in St Andrews. Making new friends, chatting with academic heroes, brainstorming Big Team Science & outreach, hanging out with old and new @divintelligence.bsky.social fellows, and basically having an epic week. My heart and brain are full.

Are you a PhD student, have an offer, or have had an offer recently rescinded from a US university? If so, Western (in London, ON, Canada) has a new scholarship program for you! Check out this news story. I can vouch for this university! You will love it. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Please repost. For those who might have missed it, our School has three ongoing positions advertised. The work environment here at Monash is top notch: supportive, collegiate and inclusive. And Melbourne is an awesome city to live in. Deadline fast approaching. Get cracking on those applications!

My sound track for Bristol➡️St Andrews is all sorted! 🎧 @manymindspod.bsky.social was the obvious choice, given that I’m joining the @divintelligence.bsky.social and wider Diverse Intelligence gang for their annual summit 🙌 🧠

Important new work (from Elisa Bandini, @ctennie.bsky.social, @sofiaforss.bsky.social et al.) addressing an elephant in the room - how weird are our weirdest apes, and how is that skewing research efforts? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Jurassic World had some pretty cool speculative dinosaur skills. Mutualistic hunting, T-rex swimming… a possible hint at mirror self recognition!? I absolutely loved dinosaurs growing up, and never in 200 million yrs thought I’d get to study ‘living dinosaur’ cognition rdcu.be/evZCt

Just returned from a @affect-evo.bsky.social ‬in Latvia, where we discussed how to map out affective states across phylogeny. No easy feat! Very proud to co-lead the 'joy' subgroup & will try my best to represent captive wildlife. A super challenging yet exciting COST Action to be a part of!

What are we talking about when we're talking about "cognition"? Terminology in this field has become confused and confusing. While writing our recent review, we tried to structure terms for our own sanity, and provide a template in a Glossary royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

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

The #UFAW2025 conference was 💯! Highly flexible for multiple time zones and balancing other work (you can still register post hoc to access the recordings, I believe). My talk on animal gameplay was a call to develop rule-based challenges for animals so they can play well & develop skills.

NEW PAPER🎺 How does cognition determine an individual’s fitness? A systematic review of the links between cognition, behaviour and fitness in non-human animals Lots of studies try to explain how cognition might evolve, by taking a behavioural ecology approach Has this approach made any progress?🧵

The three academic positions (Lecturer/Senior Lecturer) in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University are now advertised. Details here: Ecology: careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo... Genomics: careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

We did some science. We found some things. Killer whales get by with a little kelp from their friends. Evidence of tool manufacture and use in resident killer whales - check it out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We're hiring📢📢📢 To complement our team we're currently looking for a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in animal communication and behaviour, ideally canids but not a must! Position is based in Vienna, Austria, and available for 4 years. Please check the attachment for details 🐺🐶😊

New PhD position in our group! Join us to study gull foraging ecology at sea using GPS and accelerometry data! You will be working here Amsterdam Movement Ecology group under supervision of @judyshamounb.bsky.social, @rooskentie.bsky.social and me. Apply here werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Yes its a taxidermied badger on a skateboard. Incredible.

In March we put on an insect cabaret show I developed with Cap-A-Pie Theatre about insects and the threats they face. We've now uploaded the songs and everyone can now see how brilliant the actors and song-writer were. Thread of songs below 👇🧪 #Insects #cabaret #theatre #scicomm #songs

Wouldn’t it be cool if academics got a “reading week” in summer. And did nothing but read. I’d sign up! Or, everyone needs to turn their paper into a podcast so I can catch up on my commute.

We are looking for a Research Assistant to contribute to our ongoing analysis of dolphin acoustic data from West Wales - collaboration between @wtsww.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social 🐬 Deadline is 29th June - please share widely! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

You might have heard that psychology has a WEIRD problem. Though it aims to understand human minds, many of its studies have historically been skewed towards WEIRD minds. In this 🚨NEW PAPER🚨, @kristinandrews.bsky.social and I argue that comparative cognition also has a WEIRD problem. 👇🧵 1/17

I will be talking about 'fun and games' at the @ufaw.bsky.social international research conference on 26 June. 🎲

Job alert! Assistant professorship in humanities (including cognitive science) at Lund University (deadline 17 Aug). lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/... See the Cognitive Zoology group: www.lucs.lu.se/research/cog... And the recent focus on Deep Time Cognition: www.deeptimecognition.lu.se/start

On your to-do list today: Follow @laurasimonelewis.bsky.social on BlueSky immediately because she’s wonderful.

🚨Anyone want a job?🚨 We have two #postdocs up for grabs! 🧪 - cell developmental biology/#evodevo/#neuroevodevo - bioinformatics and molecular biology Both working on brain evolution in Heliconiini butterflies Details below! Please repost 🙏 1/n

It's CES election time! We have FOUR positions that have come up for renewal, so please consider nominating yourself or your colleagues. Nominations close June 20th, with voting from June 30th -July 4th.

We are seeking a scientific coordinator for my research group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig 😊🧠🌈 Could be ideal for a gap year between MSc and PhD or PhD and postdoc! Please out more here: recruitingapp-5218.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/43...?

Interested in unravelling the mysteries of animal sleep? We are hiring a postdoc for Niels Rattenborg's research group! The project will in particular investigate neural activity in sleep-swimming geese. More info's: www.bi.mpg.de/2764364/job_...

🎉Exciting times ahead for @elmanubohn.bsky.social, Michael Franke, and me! We will soon be advertising 2 PhD positions (linguistics/biology/psychology) for our SFB subproject "Modeling Great Ape Signaling Behaviour" 🧮 🐵 Stay tuned!

So excited to see that my June cover story in The Psychologist (British Psychological Society publication) is finally out! I talk all things animals - from the dry subject of Pavlov’s dog to the cognition of endangered species, and more. Free to read online www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

An interesting assumption by Google’s AI feature… (this is my research I asked it to summarise, btw!)

Interested in biology and comparative psychology, and working in an interdisciplinary project and research team? I’m advertising two PhD positions on the evolutionary origins of cooperative sociality and communication (start 1.10.) at the University of Konstanz👇 links below!

LEMURS CAN PLAY CONNECT4! Not really... but the concept of animals 'playing games' is not as crazy as it looks and sounds. A game is a challenge with known parameters, and play develops skill. Levelling up the study of animal gameplay, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews (2025)

Join the MacaqueNet family! We’re looking for a postdoc to study the link between social structure and lifespan across species, using MacaqueNet data and a new life-history database. Feel free to reach out—I'm happy to chat about MacaqueNet, CRAB, or living in Exeter. shorturl.at/xyNsL

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Fabulous discussion with Dr. Kate Nave - wide-ranging, nuanced, clear, smart thinking about agency, purpose, life, cybernetics, the FEP, process philosophy and lots more! open.spotify.com/episode/4PKy...