Constructing a nest underwater is no easy task! But shell-dwelling cichlids are expert architects, instinctively transforming empty snail shells into protective nests.
Take a deep dive into the new cichlid research from our Institute!
🔗 Press release: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2026-04...
Re-amplifying great work I somehow missed—nicely showing what many of us suspected (and then some). #TeamRL 🔥
🚨 Postdoctoral Opportunity for Female Scientists🚨
The University of Vienna is awarding at least 20 fully funded 4 year postdoctoral positions to outstanding female scientists
Interested? Get in touch via direct message
careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e...
#MicroSky 🧪
#PostDoc @univie.ac.at
Ending 2025 strong—new paper out today in #ProcB!
Dynamic strategic social learning in nest-building zebra finches and its generalizability 🐦🌿🧠👩💻
Preprint thread below 👇
Paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
🚨Job Alert plz RT!
Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!
We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals
Open-rank
apply.interfolio.com/178146
There's still time left to apply to join us for the 2026 field season! Deadline: Dec 1 👇🏝️🏕️📊👥
BehaveAI is live!
Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease.
Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source.
Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI
📣 Apply now for the 🌵CaCTüS 3-month fully funded internship in Germany in 2026!
Work on ML, theor. neuroscience, computational psychiatry, behavioral experiments or data analysis at a top institution in Tübingen. For students facing barriers in higher education. 👉 cactus-internship.tuebingen.mpg.de
#CrowCoG is hiring🚨MULTIPLE PAID RESEARCH ASSISTANT POSITIONS 🚨for our 2026 field season (May - Sep)! Field and aviary-based positions - come help us study the remarkable tool-making New Caledonian crows. Apply here: bit.ly/3WlxxHE
Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur...
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
Out today in @plosbiology.org (1/5)
Siblings and non-parental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits 🐦🧩
Link to study:
10.0.5.91/journal.pbio...
Co-authors:
@lucymaplin.bsky.social
@galarconnieto.bsky.social
#bowerbirds are the only birds that build structures used specifically for courtship. But why and how did this remarkable ability evolve?
We discuss some possibilities in our new review in Emu - Austral Ornithology!
@fusanilab.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/0158...
Group photo of postdocs conducting research at a Max Planck Institute
The #MaxPlanckPostdocProgram offers a guaranteed contract of at least 3 years, targeted mentoring, and career workshops. The call for applications is open now! 🚀 Take advantage of this opportunity and browse the job vacancies. www.mpg.de/en/max-planc...
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...
New paper from my group led by Odd Jacobson, former PhD student & current postdoc @livingingroups.bsky.social : How do animal groups simultaneously balance between- and within-group competition in dynamic environments and does this impact movement and space use? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
“the widespread appeal of animal tool use is partly due to anthropocentrism”
👍 for this new comparison of how animal tools and nests are talked about, from Sally Street et al.
The need to slap a human-like ‘intelligence’ label on animals is a symptom of this bias (writing a book on that now) 🧪🪹🔨
🚀Join our team @tuda.bsky.social ! 🚀
I'm looking for 3 PhDs & 1 Postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu project “C4: Compositional Compression in Cognition and Culture” to study learning across individuals, teams, and cultural timescales
👉 PhD: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html
👉 Postdoc: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....
More great EWA modelling repos worth a shout-out:
🐒 @bjjbarrett.bsky.social et al. (capuchins):
🔗 github.com/bjbarrett/pa...
🐍 @mchimento.bsky.social et al. (Python-based theory):
🔗 github.com/michaelchime...
🧵8/n
Not a co-author, but a major influence -- big thanks to @dominikdeffner.bsky.social et al., whose prior modelling work and shared GitHub repo were foundational to this study:
🔗 github.com/DominikDeffn...
🧵7/n
Huge thanks to all co-authors (T. Eckersley, A. Camacho-Alpízar, C. Lambert, G. Balasubramanian, S. Healy, @rmcelreath.bsky.social, @laurenguillette.bsky.social), with extra thanks to @laurenguillette.bsky.social and @rmcelreath.bsky.social sky.social for encouraging this passion project 🙏
6/n
Overall, our study shows how computational modelling can link observed behaviour to hidden cognitive mechanisms, and probe their generalisability -- we hope this encourages wider use of these approaches in animal cognition research! 🌐📝⚙️🧠
🧵5/n
Using cognitive model estimates, we ran simulations where material rewards varied. Payoff structure -- not (dis)satisfaction -- drove social material choice. But bigger rewards didn’t mean more copying. So, preliminary insights into how material-use strategies may generalise e.g., in tool use.
🧵4/n
We link males' material choices to two asocial and two social latent learning parameters -- their decisions are dynamic! -- to provide the first formal mechanistic evidence for the cognitive basis of birds’ nest building ⚙️🧠
🧵3/n
Zebbie nest-builders seem to *copy-if-dissatisfied* with prior material-experience, particularly at 1st choice -- this suggests they recognise the utility of social information.
🧵2/n
👇 New #preprint combining computational models with zebbie data: "Dynamic strategic social learning in nest-building zebra finches and its generalisability".
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🧵1/n
Picture of Dr. Annika working on her computer
Today, we're thrilled to announce two of our incredible speakers for the #SoapboxScience Berlin 2025 event.
First up is Dr Annika Tjuka ✨
@annikatjuka.bsky.social
Tool use in insects: Assassin bugs apply resin to their forelegs before a stingless bee hunt. This makes the bees attack the bug in just the right position to be caught!
Videos will worth watching
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
1/n 🆕📄: How do children learn to adapt to different environments when making repeated choices? And what do cognitive immaturity and probability matching have to do with it? Our new article explores how kids & adults differ in probability learning across statistical task structures: mpib.berlin/R3RFy
