New paper in Animal Behaviour:
After centuries of debate, we finally have direct evidence that common cuckoos use different egg-laying tactics 🥚
doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
Check the appendix videos!
#ornithology #broodparasitism #cuckoo
@animbehsociety.bsky.social
@ivb-cas.bsky.social
Super interesting paper on the brains of vocalizing seals and sea lions. Highlighting the role of the thalamus for volitional vocal control in both mammals and birds!
For decades biologists assumed ravens follow wolves to their kills.
Our paper @science.org shows something different: ravens rarely follow wolves far. Instead they remember areas where wolf kills are common and return to them—sometimes from >150 km away.
doi.org/10.1126/science.adz9467
📷Dan Stahler
Neat study suggesting proboscis dexterity is improved by learning in an invertebrate.
Nice commentary on our recent paper on crow stick tool use. To add one piece of information: One of our crows did, in fact, sometimes use the substrate (i.e., the apparatus desk) to adjust its grip—the crow for which stick re-grasping by tossing was too subtle to be reliably detected.
Jolie, an adult female chimpanzee of the Ngogo community in Kibale National Park, Uganda, with sleeping infant son, Zawinul. CREDIT: Kevin Langergraber
After the Ngogo chimpanzee group killed 21 members of neighboring groups and expanded their territory by 22%, female birth rates more than doubled and infant survival increased sharply—showing clear fitness benefits from intergroup killing. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/TKmf50XuPjY
As a longtime fan of cool papers in @currentbiology.bsky.social, I am really thrilled to see this out!
This study sets the stage for understanding the origins of novel (vocal) behaviors.
Big shout out to the main architects of this work @xmikezheng20.bsky.social and @cliffscience.bsky.social
A pair of canaries from the canary breeding colony of the Max Planck Institute of Biological Intelligence in Seewiesen, Germany. CREDIT: Stefan Leitner
Researchers gave female canaries testosterone, which causes them to sing. Two-photon in vivo imaging reveals that songs emerge due to changes in brain cell function rather than by increasing the size of a key brain region, as was once thought. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/pn1750XhFL5
Great Dispatch piece by @milliejohnston.bsky.social et al.. Our crows are very flattered: "Great skill can be found in the dextrous movements of a tool tip. [ ] from cave paintings and papyrus scripts to Da Vinci’s sketches and today’s remote laparoscopic surgery."
www.cell.com/current-biol...
🐦 21 species all produce similar whining noises towards their brood parasites
🐦 Found in areas w/dense parasite-host networks
🐦 Playbacks trigger innate recruit response from all hosts
🐦 --> intermediate b/t innate & learned signals!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics
2/2
Awesome, congrats!!
A 2024 study found that ants best humans at tests of collective intelligence.
Learn more on #WorldAnimalDay: https://scim.ag/42nMvQJ
Thanks for sharing! Don't miss out on the videos --> bsky.app/profile/moll...
🌆🐀Scientific American article about the project we're starting on NYC rats!! scientificamerican.com/article/scie...
w/ Emily Mackevicius, Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, @basisresearch.bsky.social
Seeking collaborators and funders 🐀🌆
Thanks Arka! :)
Thank you :)
Eine Rabenkrähe schiebt mit ihrem Schnabel ein Stäbchen in eine Plexiglasbox. Text: "Rabenkrähen können lernen, Werkzeug zielgerichtet einzusetzen.". Rechts oben als Rubrik "Pressemitteilung".
Ein Forschungsteam der @unituebingen.bsky.social zeigt, wie Krähen lernen, ein Stäbchen präzise im Schnabel zu führen, um damit an Futter zu gelangen: 👉 uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet... #Neurobiologie #Biologie #Forschung
Linking it to our previous crow brain anatomy study (Moll et al., 2025, JCN): Our behavioral paradigm offers a scaffold for future studies investigating neuronal correlates of corvid tool use in the avian general motor system and beyond.
At the start of each trial, when the crows pulled the stick from the holder, the stick was often misaligned with the beak. In these cases, the initial pull was followed by brief tosses—momentary re-leases and re-grasps of the stick—to adjust its orientation within the beak and achieve a better grip.
Trained crows dexterously corrected errors when the tool’s working end lost control over the target.
DeepLabCut pose estimation (@trackingactions.bsky.social) revealed high intitial motor variability, which is essenatial for motor learning (Dhawale et al., 2017, Annu. Rev. Neurosci.).
New paper on precise tool use learning in carrion crows @currentbiology.bsky.social. We show that—like New Caledonian crows—expert carrion crows pay close attention to the working end of their tool, suggesting tool integration into their peripersonal space. 🧵 & vids! 👇
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Cool new paper on how neurons in my favorite bird's brain encode time. Congrats Millie and Max!! @milliejohnston.bsky.social , @crowbrain.bsky.social
Cool new method (functional ultrasound imaging) now established in the crow by @daliao.bsky.social and colleagues:
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/2...
Amazing meeting with amazing people!
Our paper on brain size evolution in birds of paradise was recently accepted!
In brief:
•BoPs have big brains, comparable to those of medium-sized corvids
•Neither absolute nor relative brain size appears to have co-evolved with display complexity
doi.org/10.1093/orni...
My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature!
When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️
The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar
bit.ly/3HvWSum
Our first look at midbrain PAG’s role in singing mouse vocal control. When near each other, these mice produce two divergent vocal modes. Same circuits for USVs and Songs—or different ones? Bets were made..some of us bought beers for others! Led by @xmikezheng20.bsky.social & Clifford Harpole. 👇🏽
Nature research paper: Convergent vocal representations in parrot and human forebrain motor networks
https://go.nature.com/4iEIBsz
Proud to have contributed to @jiaxuanqi.bsky.social's masterpiece out @nature.com! She shows that dopamine transients track the learned quality of song during juvenile learning and that dopamine release is driven not just by VTA firing, but by a local cholinergic mechanism! (1/x)
