Not a secret anymore! I am extremely proud and happy to present you the EVApeCognition Dataset, out now in Scientific Data.
Over the last 5 years we have assembled and standardized data from 150 studies on great ape cognition from the WKPRC in the Leipzig Zoo!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Absolutely incredible.
NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman, who commanded Artemis II, took this footage from the far side of the Moon with his iPhone.
Watch with sound on.
New preprint with Rafael Leite, Sandro Reia and Paulo Campos
Cumulative Cultural Evolution in Structured Populations
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
In which we take an old model of cumulative cultural evolution of mine and see what happens if you add social networks
@babeheim.bsky.social, Waterhouse and I describe how widespread vocal mimicry is in corvids and what might drive its evolution. Evidence is presented in 39 corvid species (30%). Using modelling approaches, we show that mimicry is likely underestimated (9/15)
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🧵 Very proud our special collection on vocal communication in corvids in Animal Cognition (@springernature.com) is now fully published! 🐦
Huge thanks to all collaborators and contributors who made this possible! (1/15)
link.springer.com/collections/...
Speaker in front of PowerPoint slide.
Excellent talk on machine-human interactions, cooperation and learning by @iyadrahwan.bsky.social, presented at @ehbea2026.bsky.social.
#ehbea2026 #culturalevolution
Opening slide Progressing the causal revolution: a case study in causal re-evaluation of applied evolutionary anthropology Sarah Myers (BirthRites MPI-EVA) Sarah Johns (University of Kent)
Closing slide Conclusions • Do a DAG * Be transparent about your assumptions • Don't report odds ratios * Pay attention to measurement error * Be more self-reflecting
Fantastic example of intellectual humility from @drsarahmyers at #ehbea2026, re-evaluating a previously published paper of her own using more robust methods. Advice to the audience: “be more reflective”
Speaker standing in front of a screen with PowerPoint slide.
Great talk by @babeheim.bsky.social at @ehbea2026.bsky.social on the cultural evolution of strategies in the game Go, including the convergence of AI on established strategies.
#ehbea2026
I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸
We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto.
The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.
I'm hiring! 📢 Fully funded 4-year PhD position in Language Evolution using Communication Games at @mpi-nl.bsky.social. Come work with me on how different social pressures shape the evolution of new communication systems in the lab! Deadline for application is May 18th! share.google/fGTKbFS4v4Gb...
In a sane world, he'd be removed from office for this
I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food. I am thinking I would like to try cake. Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape. Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy. Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much. I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on." Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …
The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me.
It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."
Easy for Batman to say, he's a billionaire
Easter EP
As AI agents get smarter, are we entering a golden age of hypercreativity? Or are we entering an age of homogenised culture where we all just recycle the same AI-generated ideas?
@adigitaltanay.bsky.social & Jay explore this and much more with @babeheim.bsky.social
youtu.be/coQnyaEw50s
If I were on a mission whose computer system required me to deal with Microsoft Outlook in space, I’d give up and go back to the slide rule
This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.
Commentaries on SCORE papers from @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social, Jelte Wicherts, and @robbwiller.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
theonion.com/no-blood-for...
This is a great idea. I'd rather the norm in science to be wrong for the right reasons, than right for the wrong ones.
I picked this up from a 7-11 in 2003 and think about it often
Come work with us! And get in touch with any questions you might have about the position, our labs or living/working in Germany #PostdocWanted
It's hard to communicate to non-USAians how deeply sad and upsetting today's actions by our government are. They were wrong in 2003 in Iraq, and they are wrong today. History will judge us all for this barbarity
Last day of February in Germany be like
a gpt in a sublime 200 lines of pure Python — it is all there. Incredible for teaching students (and yourself)
karpathy.github.io/2026/02/12/m...
There's always "Clan of the Cave Bear" if you want Neaderthal-human couplings, though that's even worse than ACOTAR
I'm learning about hypergraphs now and am curious about this - is the joke that you can accomodate interaction effects in a DAG?
Just discovered an insane new form of co-intelligence where you briefly share the mind of a great thinker in history and then a portion of their mind travels in yours for the rest of your life. Calling it a "book."
the podcast radicalization gateway is real
