Amazing opportunity for a PhD position with the wonderful Dr Megan Lambert in Vienna and her fascinating kea parrots! 10/10 recommend working with Dr Lambert. See advert linked below for more info.

Our special issue on Evolutionary Functions of Consciousness, coedited with Tecumseh Fitch and Adina Roskies, now online royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202... Contributions by (1) Irina Mikhalevich; (2) Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg; (3) Nicholas Humphrey; (cont'd)

🐦 EcoBird is hiring a Postdoc in animal cognition! Join us + @themanybirds.bsky.social to investigate innovation & problem-solving in birds. 📅 Start: as early as Jan 2026 🌍 Funded through UGent’s international mobility scheme More info & how to apply ↓ www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...

Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social. We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures. All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit... Please share / apply!🙏

Strong response to recent critiques of the sequence-struggle hypothesis. Chapeau!

The twisted secret behind a chameleon’s oddball eyes | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

These orb-weaver spiders build FAKE SPIDER DECOYS in their webs, potentially to deter predators 🤯 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Baby Limba tasting some grass #PaigntonZoo #kingcolobus #monkey #primates

My advice for #2025SVP would be aimed not to students, who are excellent in our society and I am sure will do great but on senior academics. During Q&A, please resist the urge to grandstand or grill. Be polite, constructive, and supportive. That’s how we build a stronger, kinder community. #SVP2025

🚨Another new paper alert!! 🚨 We present the first histological analysis of an ornithocheirid pterosaur tooth from Brazil’s Crato Formation, revealing exceptionally rapid tooth growth and thin enamel adapted for efficient replacement. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚨New paper alert!🚨🤩 🧪⚒️Welcome the first filter-feeding pterosaur from Brazil: Bakiribu waridza, from the Araripe Basin!! 🥳 The new species is AWESOME and was discoverd inside a regurgitalite 😱🤍 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ape discovered from offerings in the tomb of Lady Xia, the grandmother of the first Chinese emperor, turn out to be a kind of crested gibbon.

A new phylogenetic analysis of living gibbons and the mysterious subfossil taxon "Junzi", which is found to be a crested gibbon (Nomascus) and not distinct at genus level. This tree topology of recent forms has now been repeatedly recovered 💪🏻 www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

The statistical fragility of animal cognition findings: a meta-meta-analytic reappraisal ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

🥹 #PrehistoricPlanet

New at Tetrapod Zoology, a brief look at what's surely the world's best known extinct proboscidean: that Ice Age superstar the Woolly mammoth .... tetzoo.com/blog/2025/11... #mammoths #IceAge #Pleistocene #fossilmammals #elephants

Webinar: Associating hominin fossils with their burial environment, and hopefully each other by Ted Present on 17 November 2025, 10:30 am ET (NY) / 3:30 pm (UK) / 6:30 pm (Nairobi) Zoom Meeting Link: stonybrook.zoom.us/j/9433303798... Meeting ID: 943 3303 7980 / Passcode: 686719

We are our best when we collaborate. 🧪🦠🔬🧬🌍🍄 This mural about the invisible #soil #biodiversity in Moers(🇩🇪) resulted from the collaboration between my friend Dr. Arne Schwelm, the people from sci:moers and the Stiftung für Umwelt und Entwicklung under the artistic direction of #cokyone.

MSc internship / Field Assistant position available in our group! Impact of urbanisation on avian reproduction 🐦🏙️ 🌳 Deadline: 7 Nov 2025 All details 👉 www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/... Please share it around!

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” 🧵

A 164.7 cm #rhino horn from #Yakutia sheds light on woolly rhinoceros morphology, longevity, and sexual dimorphism zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #permafrost #palaeoecology @davehone.bsky.social @amcell.bsky.social @elissazcameron.bsky.social @conservresearch.bsky.social

The mammalogy course had luck with the marsupials at Zoo Duisburg today. Devils, koalas, macropods, wombats ...

Brittle star swimming! Love this movement.

Talk about an in-flight meal. For the first time, researchers have captured rats hunting bats by grabbing them from the sky. Learn more: https://scim.ag/3Jqldmn

The Christmas Island shrew, Crocidura trichura, declared extinct 19 October 2025.

"Prediction of color from melanosomes in fossil mammals merits caution" Great to see some nuanced takes in this.

New paper out today on hippocampus neuron morphology in homing and feral pigeons. 🧵 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #neuroskyence #neuroethology #anatomy

📢 New article out in PLOS BIology! It was truly a pleasure and honour be a part of the core team members to lead this study and work alongside 129 collaborators from 82 institutions across 24 countries - the largest ever comparative study of neophobia in 🐦! 🥰

For #Croctober Day 19 we got an extant animal, the modern African Dwarf Crocodile. The vocal range of crocs is not widely appreciated and we still learn more about them. For example, last year a paper revealed that dwarf crocs make mooing sounds soundcloud.com/user-4989432...

Check out this incredible hand skeleton from one of our weirdest extinct cousins, Australopithecus (or Paranthropus) boisei, just published by @carriemongle.bsky.social and colleagues #FossilFriday www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Alhalabi, W.A., Pinheiro, F.L., Jaoude, I.B. et al. Recovering lost time in Syria: a gigantic latest Cretaceous azhdarchid pterosaur from the Palmyrides mountain chain. Sci Nat 112, 78 (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s001...

Out now in Biology Letters, my latest paper tackles an apparently simple question: how many characters are needed to reconstruct a phylogeny? TL;DR: in most cases between 100 and 500, more than a substantial portion of morphological datasets, but the story is more complex... doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

So excited that our first major empirical @themanybirds.bsky.social paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! Leading this big team science project, with our excellent core leadership team, is a labour of love for me, delighted to see our hard work over the past 4 years has reached this milestone!

Two main ecological factors predicted neophobia: 🥗 Dietary specialisation – species with narrower diets were more fearful. 🧭 Migratory behaviour – migratory species were more cautious. ➡️ Supporting both the Neophobia Threshold & Dangerous Niche Hypotheses.

Across 1,439 birds from 136 species and 25 avian orders, we used standardised tests: familiar food was presented with and without a novel object. ⏱️ Longer hesitation = higher neophobia. Flamingos were cautious, falcons bold - big differences across species! (Photo credit: @jimeloism.bsky.social)

Congrats to everyone involved! Penguins, cassowaries, seriemas, hornbills, flamingos and so many more groups- all covered. Contributing to this project has been a real pleasure! Onto the next one ...🦅🐓🦢🐧🦜🦩🦉🐦‍⬛

Palaeoproteomics goes micro! In our latest publication, we demonstrate that taxonomic identifications can be obtained using shotgun proteomic approaches on microscopic bone fragments in resin-embedded sediment blocks!

Dancing crested gibbons made it into National Geographic! The individual shown in the article (Polly) actually features in our study - which you can find here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Helveticosaurus Lair

The quick brown gibbon jumped over the green rainforest…

"...regional extinction rate of between 75 and 84% for squamates in the Western Interior of North America and suggests this group was more severely impacted across the K/Pg boundary than other small-bodied vertebrates." royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Geology

This is so cool! Four amino acid changes in the naked mole rat cGAS turn it from a DNA repair inhibitor into an enhancer www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... What is going on in armadillos, which have lost the cGAS and STING genes‽ #PetosParadox #EvMed 🧪 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40463121/

Contrary to reporting, this new 30 day study on captive naked mole-rats still provides no evidence for eusociality. NMR behaviors change with age (polyethism) - this has been known for decades and is not unusual. Still highly ambitious and important work. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Want to know everything about bird smell? I wrote an "Ornithological masterclass" on Avian Olfaction for BTO News @btobirds.bsky.social #ornithology Link to the article 👉 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Day 7 of #Croctober The Messel Pit in Germany is well known for its fossil crocs, which includes not one but two distinct lineages of terrestrial forms. On the one hand the sebecoid Bergisuchus dietrichbergi, on the other the eusuchian Boverisuchus magnifrons

I am going to repost our job ad because we are not getting many applicants! Like anywhere, there are pros and cons, so if you have questions just DM or email me. #academicjobs #neuroskyence #neuroethology #academicsky

A pair of Cartorhynchus lenticarpus, swimming in the shallow coastal waters of Early Triassic Asia #paleoart #sciart #art

For those who want to read the original Osborn paper from 1905 naming Tyrannosaurus rex, its junior synonym Dynamosaurus imperiosus, and Albertosaurus sarcophagus, here it is! digitallibrary.amnh.org/items/a02fc8...