Leigh Hickmott in front of a title slide

Leigh Hickmott present a fine scale analysis of dive behaviour of beaked whales responding to milttary sonar #ECS2026 🐋🥳🐋🦑🧪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Jeanne Merindol stands beside her poster

Let's goooo! #ECS2026 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @jeannemrdl.bsky.social is presenting work on humpback song in soundscapes of New Caledonian lagoons 🥳 🐋 🦑🧪 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

🔊Out now with @lsburchardt.bsky.social @marcosqoliva.bsky.social, Kouřil & Petrusková:

Yellowhammer males sing using individual isochronous rhythms & maximise rhythmic dissimilarity with their neighbours.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Huge congrats @ahanaaurora.bsky.social! So very well deserved! 🎉🎉🎉🦇🦇🦇

What enables human language? A biocultural framework Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of language evolution. The approach is multifaceted, ...

“The rich complex nature of human social ecologies creates new challenges, which select for cognitive capacities that support distinctive forms of communication & facilitate creation of linguistic conventions in turn.” @thomscottphillips.bsky.social & co in a valuable eLetter response to our paper.🧪

"Many animals communicate using sequences of signals, but identifying recurrent, non-random signal combinations remains methodologically challenging"

New from @ehowaspi.bsky.social addresses limitations of current statistical methods

Code + data: osf.io/6cgbm/overview

🧵👇

#bioacoustics
#prattle 💬

Very proud to present our paper on the spectacular “dances” of Victoria’s riflebirds!

Out now in Current Biology.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

What will the rats in our cities and the dolphins in our seas demand from us if we can engage in two way communication? Are we ready for these responsibilities? We think that the organizations supporting the research are obligated to prepare the world to have these conversations. 13/13 rdcu.be/fbZwv

How First Contact With Whale Civilization Could Unfold If we can learn to speak their language, what should we say?

There has been lots of media attention on using AI to talk about animals, including articles by @rossandersen.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/science/arch... and prizes offered for decoding animals signals coller-dolittle-24.sites.tau.ac.il
3/

New open access publication in Topoi! @kristinandrews.bsky.social and I explore the ethics of AI animal translation projects. 🖥️🐬Before we build it, we need to take stock of the ethical implications.
rdcu.be/fbZwv 🧵👇1/13

Thanks for sharing! Just posted a thread on the paper for anyone interested: bsky.app/profile/marr...

Acoustic indices are not useful for biodiversity research Biodiversity assessment using passive acoustic monitoring has historically been challenging due to the limited availability of multi-species acoustic detectors. In this context, acoustic indices w...

Personally I'm concerned about reducing animal communication to one or a few AI/ML "metrics"; might be interesting to compare with issues arising from acoustic indices, as discussed by @borneangibbons.bsky.social et al

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

#bioacoustics
#prattle 💬

Can we talk to the animals? The ethics of using machine learning to decode animal communication - Topoi There is currently much scientific and public interest in using machine learning to uncover the meaning of animal signals, which could ultimately lead to two-way communication systems between humans a...

Paper on the ethics of using AI/ML to decode animal communication, from @marriah.bsky.social @kristinandrews.bsky.social

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Addresses work of @earthspecies.bsky.social @projectceti.bsky.social & others

#bioacoustics
#prattle 💬

Flexible, abstract rhythm perception in bumble bees Flexible, abstract rhythm perception underpins human music, dance, and speech, but thus far, it has only been demonstrated in a few birds and mammals. In this work, we show that bumble bees also form ...

Bumblebees got rhythm 🐝

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New Paper Alert! BirdNET: Automated Detection for Monitoring Critically Endangered Lemurs from the Maromizaha Forest. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Arik Kershenbaum: The Evolution of Communication in Animals and Humans | Episode 115 YouTube video by Brain Shaman

Here I am in a nice detailed podcast about the evolution of communication and what that means about human brains.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ahn...

After 4 years, I can still not believe my PhD has come to an end. I am incredibly grateful to my supervisors who were the best supervisors I could have dreamt of, always supporting and guiding me while allowing me to explore and develop as a researcher and as a person🐒

🐒 Second PhD chapter on sooty mangabeys out! The rule-based vocal sequences we first described? They might actually mean something! Females use specific combinations when handling others' infants, suggesting compositionality to signal benign intent 💞.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I'm super pleased that #xenocanto has launched this new feature: detailed annotations for its animal sound data! https://xeno-canto.org/article/318 Xeno-canto is the most valuable #birdsong/#animalsound archive. This will help even more!

There's a lot of buzz around this dataset

#bioacoustics
#prattle 💬

New work from myself, @kasiawojczulanis.bsky.social @lsburchardt.bsky.social : seabird calls share not only efficiency universals, but also prosodic patterns with our speech. Rallentando rhythms carry info absent in spectra. 🔊🐧
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sequence-level vocal convergence in common marmosets www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

🧠🧪🧵1/37
Our new paper on how pinniped (seal and sea lion) brains evolved to unlock vocal plasticity is this week's @science.org cover.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Important new work by @pfcook.bsky.social & colleagues
on the neurobiology underlying vocal production learning in pinnipeds, out in @science.org 🧪🧠

I’m excited to share my newest work with @benhayden.bsky.social, and the work I’m most proud of to date, on characterizing semantic coding in single-neuron hippocampal activity in patients with autism during natural language comprehension!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Language, Intelligence & Thought lab is looking for a lab manager! This is a 2-year postbac position that will allow you to gain experience in human neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI research prior to applying to PhD programs.

Express interest here: forms.gle/npXEGUjGUbp5...

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

Job Opportunity at Lancaster University: Senior Research Associate in Machine Learning for Speech Processing Senior Research Associate in Machine Learning for Speech ProcessingDepartment: Phonetics Laboratory / Linguistics and English LanguageLocation: Bailrigg, Lancaster, UKSalary: £39,906 (pro-rata if part...

I’m hiring an 18-month postdoc to work on physics-informed machine learning for acoustic-articulatory speech inversion at
@phoneticslab.bsky.social

🗓️ Deadline: Friday 10 April.

🔗 More info & applications: hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

📣 Please share with anyone who might be a good fit!

Pleased to announce the BioDCASE Challenge 2026 - the Bioacoustics Data Challenge! Now with 6 different tasks to choose from, each an open-data computational challenge of its own: https://biodcase.github.io/challenge2026/ #machinelistening #BioDCASE #bioacoustics #DCASE #sound

Workshop on Animal Social Evolution! July 13th-15th, Heraklion (Greece)

We are inviting early-career researchers from Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean to a hands-on, three-day workshop dedicated to methods and tools in social behaviour and evolution

marinapapa.github.io/TRASEworksho...