Purr-fection 🤌

Amidst everything else, the Trump regime has quietly killed off the U.S. Forest Service 🌲 “One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests… just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.” www.hatchmag.com/articles/tru...

The emotional trauma inflicted by ICE on our immigrant neighbors is devastating — and often neglected. So it’s really beautiful to see @envfreefund.bsky.social create this support group. (1/2)

TurboTax and H&R Block spent $7 million lobbying the Trump administration to kill Direct File. Both companies donated to Trump's 2024 campaign and inauguration committees.

The 'eyelashes' on a southern ground hornbill would make a model envious, but here's a neat trick: Those AREN'T eyelash hairs. They're modified FEATHERS. Let's take a look at these specialized structures & why the southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri) needs these long velvet veils.

I’m really excited for this SF! With it we’re trying to combat the positive bias in publishing - how we and reviewers are inclined to only lift up research that goes as expected. But we all know there are so many lessons to be learned when you get unexpected results, or when things don’t work. 🧪

This flew under the radar: Trump's new acting AG Todd Blanche shut down major DOJ investigations into crypto companies, dealers, and exchanges as Pam Bondi's second-in-command — all while holding at least $159,000 in crypto assets himself. The fox is guarding the hen house.

Our colleague needs your help keeping a 1,200-year dataset alive! If you have botanical expertise or are based near Arashiyama, Kyoto — DM her or email [email protected].

New in @science.org ‼️ In the most comprehensive study to date, we show that wildlife trade is driving animal-to-human zoonotic spillover at a planetary scale, with +1 spillover per host every 10 years. Live animal markets and illegal trade pose even greater risks. 🔓 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Ecuador study finds tropical rainforest biodiversity rebounds over 90% in 30 years 🌎 phys.org/news/2026-04...

Emperor Penguin now Endangered!🐧 Our new IUCN Red List assessment reveals the shocking impact of climate change.🌍 Drastic declines and erratic changes in sea ice in Antarctica are projected to cause the Emperor Penguin population to halve by the 2080s.📉 Read more👉 www.birdlife.org/emperorpenguin

The United States has signed and ratified the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Articles II and III define punishable acts, including "conspiracy to commit genocide" and "direct and public incitement to commit genocide". Trump has done both.

Oh this is great: there’s now an #Artemis II Lunar Flyby Gallery on the NASA images site: www.nasa.gov/gallery/luna... (thx @dpmanchee.bsky.social for pointing it out)

Billionaires are crying foul about California's proposed wealth tax. Don't fall for their fearmongering. A one-time, 5% tax on their excessive wealth is essential to funding what millions of Californians need — and to preserving our democracy.

I made a little Instagram reel about this image because it’s just so frickin’ cool

I am shocked to see this language from the NSF. “The U.S. National Science Foundation's Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment while eliminating woke and weaponized grant programs that previously funded radical DEI projects.”

Trump is asking Congress for even more money for war, offset by billions in cuts to domestic and social safety-net programs. It makes this 1970s anti-war PSA all the more relevant today.

Priorities.

Applications are now open for our #BasicR Course followed by the two week #Animove workshop @mpalarc.bsky.social. Perfect for African-affiliated students and researchers-with funding available for eligible participants! 👉 Apply now: animove.org/basic-r-cour... See you in Kenya! 🇰🇪 #AfricanResearchers

every few months i come back to this animation by @livingcardsmtg.bsky.social, and since quandrix has been on the mind...

Her grin knowing how this arrest looks (Published in The Atlantic today)

I feel like basically every Bird Collective design is targeted toward me but my goodness look at this one www.birdcollective.com/products/mig...

Big hit today at the Museum of Biological Diversity open house

A new paper in Science measured the prevalence of social sycophancy across 11 leading large language models. The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We're hiring an Assistant Professor of Ecology! Come and join me and a great group of colleagues at University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Our job ad: efhc.fa.ca2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... Message me if you have questions. @ibiouwindsor.bsky.social @uwindsor.bsky.social

Interested in understanding how bumblebees are responding to climate change? Well look no further than a competition funded PhD position with me and Rachael Dudaniec at Macquarie University, Sydney 🇦🇺 Details below ⬇️ www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Punch the monkey has taken over the internet. But why? Primatologist Christine Webb chats with Flora about how anthropomorphism makes us so invested in the social life of a monkey in Japan. Listen to this and more from 2-4 pm ET on your local public radio station. Happy Science Friday! 🐒

periodic reminder that there were literally no trans women competing at either the 2024 or 2026 Olympics, it's an issue that takes up 90% of some peoples' brains and literally 0% of the last two actual Olympic competitions

Job 🚨 Please share!! We have a teaching track faculty opening in our undergraduate behavioral biology program at Johns Hopkins University Teaching animal behavior plus self-developed courses facultyjobs.jhu.edu/Positions/De... @jhu.edu @jhuartssciences.bsky.social

if you want to know the history of this kind of policy, I made a podcast two years ago that explained why these tests make no sense, how they were already used and eventually abandoned by the IOC in the 80's and 90's, and the devastating impacts they have on real athletes: www.tested-podcast.com

The news has moved on, but ICE is still in Minneapolis. My neighbors are still patrolling streets, driving strangers to work, and providing aid. As a photojournalist at @propublica.org, I wanted to know: What do they look like in their daily lives? So I picked up my camera 👇

APPLY NOW! Start circa May 1. Candidates need prior birding experience & familiarity with/ songs & calls of western montane birds, a strong desire to learn more, & willingness to face the rigors of fieldwork w/ good humor. Additional training will be provided. More info here: birdpop.org/docs/job...

NEW: Wikipedia has banned AI-generated content.

🏅 Shortlisted for the 2025 Robert May prize! 🏅 In his blog post, @robboyd.bsky.social talks about his paper 'Using causal diagrams and superpopulation models to correct geographic biases in biodiversity monitoring data' 🌍 🧪 Read the blog and find the full article 👇 buff.ly/a7UROJJ

Who knew what? When did they know it? How close were they to Trump's inner circle? And can anyone within or around the orbit of this regime be trusted to put the interests of the American public above their own pocketbook? It is maddening that we even need to ask these questions.

All 33 shrike species trace their roots to Africa ~8 million years ago, when C4 grasses exploded across the continent. Oh, and Magpie Shrikes? Just big Lanius. The first complete shrike phylogeny reveals Laniidae is basically one giant genus. doi.org/10.1111/zsc.... #2026MMM #RIP

Ecologists love response ratios for meta-analysis❤️ But… they can’t be converted into other effect sizes—making it impossible to have a unified dataset of all published effect sizes in ecology I fix this with a conversion to Hedges’ d to help unify our data! (Link to Ecology Letters paper below):

Did you know the Pentagon loses $800B per year?

Forget about bouba and kiki, can you tell me if humans and Panamanian frogs both prefer EDM to dubstep? Very cool comparative work, shows shared sound preferences across species, from @loganjames.bsky.social @sarahcwoolley.bsky.social @sakatalab.bsky.social @mehr.nz et al. #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics

What happened to "America First"?

🏅 Shortlisted for the 2025 Robert May prize! 🏅 The paper by @jennamkline.bsky.social provides a comprehensive overview and field guide for researchers working at the intersection of computer vision, aerial robotics, and behavioral ecology 🦒 Read more here 👇 buff.ly/HEmk8Eh

Interesting paper but also lowkey brutal: Jokes eliciting whole-room laughter were rare (9%), while the majority fell flat or landed mildly, earning mostly quiet chuckles (67%) 🧪 I like to imagine this was driven by a researcher determined to provide proof that a colleague was statistically unfunny

Intra- and inter-specific competition interact: multi-factorial experiments in two tit species url: academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...

A Look Back: from February 18–21, 2026, Grünau was the hub of behavioral biology as the @ethoges.bsky.social held its annual conference—featuring exciting research insights, lively discussions, and plenty of space for emerging scientists. @univie.ac.at 📸: Archiv KLF, M. Klymenko, D. Matejschek

When I hear from students that I’m getting a reputation as a hard-ass for flunking students who use AI

The United States are falling behind, Germany remains unchanged: the #AcademicFreedom Index Update 2026 provides an overview on the state of academic freedom in 179 countries and territories around the world. academic-freedom-index.net @fau.de @vdeminstitute.bsky.social