What do friends do? Friends get you the ultimate nerd status symbol: a giant prickly stick insect, Extatosoma tiaratum. Welcome, Michalina (aka Misia-Patysia)! 🧪 🦂 🌍

I met Jane Goodall in 2005, when she was visiting the @houstonzoo.bsky.social; I was doing my undergrad project there, and she came over to chat about meerkats and mongooses. You can see a glimpse of her in the snapshot a friend took on that day. RIP, Jane. 🌏🧪🐵

Jane Goodall dies age 91. A conservation icon gone. 🧪 🐒 🌍 www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9...

In October, the British Council will be launching the Climate Skills Global Collaboration Grants 2025, offering grants up to £85,000 for partnerships between the UK and Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Viet Nam. opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/short-articl... #AcademicSky #climate 🧪

Anyone in need of excellent #teaching resources (UG and postgrad) for #ecology and #conservation? Bill has created some amazing explainer videos, and they're all free and ready for you to use. Enjoy. #AcademicSky 🧪🌍

🐻Why does #FatBearWeek matter, for bears and people?🐻 @antoniouzal.bsky.social writes for @theconversation.com: theconversation.com/alaskas-fat-... Meanwhile, vote in the semi-finals for your favourite chonky bear here: explore.org/fat-bear-week 🧪🌍🦊

🐻🐻🐻🐻 It is finally here. Fat Bear Week 2025. 🐻🐻🐻🐻 Vote for the fattest, portliest, chubbiest bear of Katmai NP (@fatbearweek.bsky.social). Some of these chonks weigh more than half a ton, and have gained over 100kg since July. Who will win this year? Voting is open: explore.org/fat-bear-week 🧪🌍🦊

Calling all chimp enthusiasts! Oxon Mammal Group winter seminar season kicks off with a talk by @pintsizedprimate.bsky.social from @oxford-anthro.bsky.social on chimpanzee cultures, archaeology and conservation. 13 Oct, 7pm, at @morethanadodo.bsky.social. Free for members, 3GBP for non-members. 🧪🐵

#IgNoble prize winner: Painting cows with zebra-like striping reduces biting fly attacks. 💡Painting black-and-white stripes can increase cattle welfare without the use of pesticides, proposing a solution for the problem of pesticide resistance in the environment. 🧪🌍🪰🦓🐮 doi.org/10.1371/jour...

🐀 Personality tests for wild mice! 🐀 Small mammals come with different personalities, and these personalities can impact ecological outcomes. How can we standardise measuring personality traits in wild small mammals? @alessiomortelliti.bsky.social and colleagues provide five key tips. 🧪🦊🌍

Wildlife advice and wild life advice: 🦇 Pipistrelle poo looks like chocolate hundreds and thousands; don't confuse the two. 🥰 Find someone who looks at you the way ecologists look at bat poo. 🧪🌍 @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social

🔎 Stereotypes and perception Brain scans show racial stereotypes can shift how we see objects. Tools shown after Black face primes were more likely to resemble weapons in neural patterns, linking stereotypes to biased perception. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #SciComm #Neuroscience #Bias 🧪

Finishing the day of fieldwork on Port Meadow with a vegetation survey. 🧪 🌱 ☔ 🌈

Also, fieldwork in the UK... 🧪 🌲 ☂️ @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social

Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head... Giant puffball! 🧪 🌍 🍄

Hello, smooth newt! Hello, baby slow worm! Can you tell I'm welcoming a new cohort of ecology students at @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social this week? 🧪 🌍 🦎

It is with heavy heart (and, unfortunately, deep affection) that I must reshare a snippet from the 1980s masterpiece “Yes, Prime Minister”, in relation to Russia’s drone attack on a NATO ally.

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers! This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🦁 Lions, conservation and great storytelling - FREE online talk! 🦁 Last chance to join what promises to be a fantastic lecture by a brilliant speaker, conservationist @amydickman.bsky.social, head of @wildcru.bsky.social at @biology.ox.ac.uk. Tune in on Mon, 8 Sep at 6pm BST. 🧪

❄️ Common shrews shrink their brains in winter. 🧠 The process is reversible and occurs because brain cells shrink, rather than die off. As a result, neuronal numbers stay constant and preserve brain function. I can defo relate to seasonal brain shrinkage. 🧪🦊🌍 Paper: www.cell.com/current-biol...

OMG, I get a book launch! And not just any old book launch - this one is hosted by @tomrocksmaths.bsky.social. I have therefore challenged myself to find a *single fun fact linking ecology, maths and communication* for the event - show up, in person or online, to find out what it is. 🧪 #scicomm

📘 'The Communicating Scientist' is here! A practical guide for researchers, science professionals, or students looking to communicate more clearly and effectively in academia. bit.ly/4lNIjAu #SciComm #BookSky @joannabagniewska.com

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Wind turbines kill millions of bats each year - study suggests it could be because moonlight reflecting off the blades might attract the animals. Interesting to see how bats could be using visual cues instead of echolocation to find their way. 🧪 🦊 🦇 🌍 www.science.org/content/arti...

If you ever wondered what the ten most common dance moves are in the world of parrot discos, wonder no more. There's an entire paper devoted to bopping cockatoos, and it's as fabulous as you'd expect. 🪶🦜💃 🚨 News flash, headbanging made the cut! 🧪 🌍 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Adult jackdaws tend to bully juveniles, but they learn to tolerate them if taught to do so (and if it benefits them). Where youngsters provided access to a food source via a feeder, adults were more likely to attend to them. 🪶🧪🌏 Paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Are you a scientist looking to improve your communication skills? If only there was a resource to help... #AcademicSky 🧪 #SciComm

#academicsky 🧪 #scicomm

LOOK! We made a book, distilling our collective #scicomm experience into a mere 295 pages. Phew. Yes, it's published by the academic @springernature.com, but it's also conversational, practical and fun, and includes both general advice and specific tips for 24 communication scenarios. 🧪#academicsky

Osmoderma barnabita in Gdańsk. 🧪 🐞🌍 Thank you, Seek by iNaturalist ♥️

For any geeks out there interested in how a private storage and sharing system works, here's a useful thread. 🧪

How do (non-human!) primates get their booze? @nakedprimate.bsky.social draws on the medieval word "scrumping" to describe their consumption of fallen fruit. History, linguistics and animal behaviour come together in this great piece on tipsy apes and monkeys: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a... 🧪🌏🐒🍹

On Saturday, the great Tom Lehrer died at the age of 97. Mathematician, singer, songwriter, satirist and a great character. All of his songs are in the public domain, so if you're into tributes, now is a good time to do one. 🧪 #AcademicSky www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

UK heatwaves led to hosepipe bans across the country. With limited watering opportunities, which garden plants should we prioritise? @thebotanist.bsky.social writes for @theconversation.com: theconversation.com/hosepipe-ban... 🧪🌍🌱💧

I think a lot of folks on #academicsky could make great use of David's #scicomm expertise - even beyond sharks! Promises to be a great course. 🧪

Guess how I spent my morning? When there's ringing in a tower, but no bells are involved, you must be in the @morethanadodo.bsky.social 🐥 🧪🌍🪶 European swifts in the museum's nest boxes have been studied since 1947. Read more here: oumnh.ox.ac.uk/learn-swifts... @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social

New World porcupines, family Erethizontidae, consist of: -the toddler-sized North American porcupine -17 species of tree porcupines with prehensile tails -the largely understudied bristle-spined rat. Though all porcupines are rodents, New World species aren't closely related to Old World ones. 🧪🌏

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Spot the odd one out... 🤔 #birds 🪶

What's your favourite part of the day? Mine is cycling to work - because I love cycling, and I love working at @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social. Plus, the best ideas appear when I cycle (I call it the bike epiphany). Winning on all fronts. 🚲 #academicsky @ox.ac.uk

It's #WorldSnakeDay, everyone! 🧪🌏🐍

The increasingly militarised state border between Poland and Belarus, running through Białowieża Forest (a unique old-growth forest in Europe), is leading to higher tree damage and wildlife roadkill. 🧪☠️🌲 Paper by @katzyna.bsky.social and @michalzmihorski.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Chimps age - and when they do, using tools becomes more difficult. Pretty relatable. Article by @ehowaspi.bsky.social et al. here: elifesciences.org/articles/105... - and footage below. 🧪🌍🐒🔧

What species do you associate with OXFORD LIFELONG LEARNING? Here's my take (3). I thought it was a bit of a laugh, and then @wetpaint63.bsky.social signed his email as "Director of Spider-Jellyfish-Crow" and made my day. 🧪 #AcademicSky #OxfordLifelongLearning

What species do you associate with OXFORD LIFELONG LEARNING? Here's my take (2). I thought it was a bit of a laugh, and then @wetpaint63.bsky.social signed his email as "Director of Spider-Jellyfish-Crow" and made my day. 🧪 #AcademicSky #OxfordLifelongLearning

What species do you associate with OXFORD LIFELONG LEARNING? Here's my take (1). I thought it was a bit of a laugh, and then @wetpaint63.bsky.social signed his email as "Director of Spider-Jellyfish-Crow" and made my day. 🧪 #AcademicSky #OxfordLifelongLearning

I agree - we do have the best @ox.ac.uk department. And because I presented the awards, the ceremony had anecdotes about three species shoehorned in. What animals do you (or rather, did I) associate with Oxford Lifelong Learning ? #academicsky

An extremely rare pygmy shrew with a leucistic mutation was found by Anita McMillan near St Austell, Cornwall. CEO of the @mammalsociety.bsky.social, @mattlarsen-daw.bsky.social, states it's the first pygmy shrew with this distinctive patterning ever recorded in the British Isles. Also: CUTE😍 🧪🌍🦊

When you have the most amazing partners, the least you can do is nominate them for an award. So many people, programmes and projects from @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social collaborate with @morethanadodo.bsky.social; THANK YOU for our work together! 💙🦴🌍 Photo: Chris Jarvis (right) and a stuffed bear.

So tempting... #academicsky