ARAA will be marching Wednesday in protest. So many countries have destroyed higher education, we must fight against Austria going the same way. Come join us! 👊🏻 #UnisRetten

As a science fiction writer I really fucking resent tech bros for ruining the phrase "artificial intelligence." 80 years of it being all about cool androids and interesting computers destroyed by five years of "Spicy autocorrect making everything shittier for money." NEVER FORGIVE.

More winning. Congrats to @nomascus.bsky.social @gallinaciega.bsky.social @raccoonologist.bsky.social and others in our team for 'Top viewed article' at The Anatomical Record, the article concerned being our review of Mesozoic dinosaur cognition. Fascinating and contentious topic. #FossilFriday

“Units of the NIH are privately directing grantees to request permission in advance for any co-authorship with a scholar affiliated with a foreign institution, even if all the work was done in the United States.” Grantees also told to remove papers with foreign authors from progress reports.

Today was the first day I truly felt the impact of the rise of grocery prices. Oof 💀💸 It's fine, we don't need fruit and vegetables. Totally overrated. #ScurvySummer

extreme extractive foraging - fieldwork with @theroesa.bsky.social

Yesterday, I watched a car drive fast towards a gull (which was stood on the road), the driver _seemingly_ intending to hit the bird. They didn't. You see, there's this widespread narrative that gulls, pigeons and select other animals are 'sky rats', worthless vermin, a drain on humanity... cont

Glad I DM’d you all those years ago!!

Macho blep

early morning bird - fieldwork with @theroesa.bsky.social

Mature females can be identified by their red eye colouration (fieldwork with @theroesa.bsky.social )

knock knock - who is there?

Congrats to Dr. Gabriella Smith (@explanimals.bsky.social) for a successful PhD defensio at Vetmeduni Vienna! Read more about her thesis work on curiosity in parrots: 🦜 doi.org/10.1098/rsos... doi.org/10.1162/OPMI...

It feels like just yesterday @explanimals.bsky.social and me were conspiring ways to get her here to do a PhD in Vienna …. And now she’s done! Congrats Dr Gabs 👩🏻‍🎓

Around a remote plateau in Laos, the landscape is littered with huge, mysterious stone jars, some 3 metres high. With the discovery of one containing remains from 37 people, we finally have a decent idea how they were used. @newscientist.com 🧪 #archaeology www.newscientist.com/article/2527...

The worst part of switching my career from humanities to science is that all these biologists want to be outside allllllll the time. Im 👏🏻 an 👏🏻 indoor 👏🏻 cat 👏🏻

More fieldwork in Singapore with @theroesa.bsky.social

Our first ARAA book club event went really well! We discussed the representation of animal cognition and other themes in @aptshadow.bsky.social’s Children of Time 🕷️🚀✨📚 Shout out to @zewaldj.bsky.social for the creative powerpoint summary and @kiwiow.bsky.social for the themed make up 😍

As always, I only see cool fish on their absolute worst days

You: please act normal you need these people to like you Me: ok! People: hi Me: the ecological & social ramifications of the collapse of the American chestnut make it the worst ecological disaster in the history of the US & you can draw a straight line from it to the opioid crisis in Appalachia…

Sometimes co-authors ask me “did you see what they cited us for???” and of course I didn’t, because if you want to keep faith in humanity, you don’t look up what people cite you for, just like you don’t read comment sections.

Im super proud of my “Bird Behaviour Bingo” game, everyone got so into it that it nearly derailed the tour 🫣

Looking for more suggestions for take-downs of popular psychology claims, based on critiquing the underlying flawed research. This is for an undergraduate seminar. Here are the suitable ones I have so far.

Good decision and statement! 👏👏 "(...) preserving the integrity and reliability of the ACL proceedings is our responsibility and these measures are necessary to uphold the standards of our community and to ensure that the work published remains a credible resource for future scientific inquiry."

Congrats to our phone photo contest winners, Eva (left photo) and @tizianasrdoc.bsky.social (right photo) 🏆 👏🏻

Our “Bird Research at Schönbrunn Zoo” day went super well! We had an official guided tour, talks by Barbara Steininger on bald Ibis and @guillmcivor.bsky.social on crows, “Bird Behaviour Bingo,” a picnic and a photo contest 😍🪶☀️

Make it happen Bsky! Also, by chance are there any scientists named Riff on here?

Social media platforms and how academics use them change, but one thing doesn't

*David Attenborough voice* "A group of male Waymos, which we call a DeathWish, circle around on a track in an attempt to attract the females. Note that some are flashing their lights to show their sexual prowess."

I know it’s totally insignificant in the scheme of things, but I’m still bummed Eurovision is actually IN Vienna and because of obvious reasons I’m not attending or supporting. It’s literally on my bucket list to see live. An event of queer joy, utterly spoiled 😒

This is such a great ? Aside from rocks, I would say million year old tools. A million years! That's bananas. I thought, my great^40,000th grandparent could have made this. I really felt in awe of our ancestors at that moment.

There and back again... A year ago, I started a new field study with long-tailed macaques in tropical Bali, Indonesia. Then, I visited the snowy prairies in Alberta, Canada. I've met many great people and playful monkeys along the way. I'm very thankful for all the support during this adventure 🗺🐒

I'm taking B2 (upper intermediate) German, and just found out the new mandatory test through "Austrian Integration" (OIF) has a 90% FAIL RATE. Our teacher was basically like, "Only one of you will likely pass, and I can't even say why." Usually only 10-15% fail on the standard B2 exam! Wie blöde 😒

When news of the end of the War in Europe reached Canada on May 7, 1945, people began to celebrate. No place celebrated harder than Halifax. By the next day, 650 businesses were damaged/looted. This is the story of the Halifax Riot 📸 Halifax Municipal Archives 🧵 1/12

TO Munro returns to the ever prolific Adrian Tchaikovsky and his upcoming criminal mystery Sci-fi GREEN CITY WARS: "an outrageously fun tale with a captivating protagonist" Read more: tinyurl.com/y4jw9pf6 @torbooks.bsky.social @aptshadow.bsky.social

I'm increasingly receiving papers to review that are just not ready. The authors haven't read the major theories related to their hypotheses. This could either be due to AI writing them or the authors themselves just rushing to get things out. Either way it's a waste of time for everyone.

No no you don’t understand. It’s called Great Lakes Awareness Day because they’ve acquired sentience

Had two friends over, and instead of bringing wine or something, they brought Kraft dinner 😂 😍 @mtjzh.bsky.social knows me so well 🇨🇦

LLMs have entered the chat. And the guardrails are off. I've had the "pleasure" of seeing some R code that is clearly the result of some misguided prompt producing some very wrong and worse than useless results. This is bad. It's worse than "decision tree statistics", worse than not knowing. 4/

🎉🦜NEW PAPER ALERT 🦜🎉 Which social learning biases underly the acquisition of novel food in wild parrots ? We (@lucymaplin.bsky.social, @bjjbarrett.bsky.social, @sonjawild.bsky.social, @drjohnmartin.bsky.social) presented >700 cockies with a novel, artificial food (🧵1/6)

Oh crap, it's one of those odd things when I have specific knowledge. Back in 2000, Iran received a collection of former Soviet military dolphins from the Ukraine Navy. We have no idea how many of those dolphins are still around or if Iran continued the program.

Nobody warns you that becoming an expert means that you’re perpetually annoyed with other academics for getting everything about your topic wrong 🥴 I think tool use is especially bad, as folks twist things to count as "tool use" that clearly aren’t, in order to publish somewhere "prestigious" 🤦🏻‍♀️

YES! If I have one piece of advice for students/early career people, it is to use and learn the free/open source software inside out, even if your institution has licenses for the commercial equivalents. There will be a future time where you will lose access to the license, and they are *expensive*!

This was our experience, where being a religious evangelical was synonymous with being a conservative.

1/2 Former believers are more left-leaning They studied 3,594 nonreligious individuals (USA), and those who were raised in Christian families but are no longer religious are more liberal than those who were raised without religion. (paper) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

sometimes i wish the bins were honest

Happy Perfect Date Day, everyone

After all this time, I still have moments when I’m struck by how surreal it is to live in Vienna. This is just part of my walk to the gym each week 🤷🏻‍♀️

Can parrots 🦜 learn the names of people and animals they live with? Yes. Do they use them correctly? Sometimes. Read more about how parrots of many species use names in our recently published article: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour... @viktoriagroiss.bsky.social @chris-birdnerd.bsky.social #parrots