In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.
Our 2nd session of the morning focuses on personality and flexibility — from aggression rates in lemurs to inhibition in cichlids, showcasing again the incredible diversity of behavioural research! 🐒🐀🐟
#gradmeet25
@jannesdoesscience.bsky.social @saskiasp.bsky.social
Kicking off day 3 of #GradMeet25 with more talks on sociality — linking it to dispersal, cognition, and endocrinology! From social dispersal in burying beetles to hormonal changes in cheetahs 🐘🐅🦀🪲
@paulhuber.bsky.social @carolin-schlarb.bsky.social @robotowilliam.bsky.social
Our final session focused again on methodologies 🧩 — with exciting applications from form-based approaches to assess chimpanzee gestures to facial action coding in rabbits 🐒🐇
@chiarazulberti.bsky.social
#gradmeet25
Thank you very much for having me on today! Had a great time presenting my results about the adorable mouse lemurs.
Is it ok to acknowledge in papers funding opportunities that did not give you any $?
Like "We’d like to specially thank the NSX grant panel ABC for not giving us a cent and for pushing our creativity to a level we didn’t know we had—allowing us to complete this project with no funding"?
#academia 🧪
Sir David Attenborough’s latest film reveals the truth about bottom trawling — a fishing method that razes the seafloor like a bulldozer.
This #WorldOceansDay, let’s raise our voices and take a stand.
Are you into 🐟🦐 ,🌊&💻📈?
Come join us at the Theoretical Ecology Group @unibergen.bsky.social
We’ve got 2 #PhD and 1 #Postdoc openings—fully funded, all for 3 years, all part of a funtastic team.
🔗 PhD: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
🔗 Postdoc: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
#AcademicJobs
To add to your annual report
Going on a limb here, but is it possible that Joker tried to imitate the adult females of the group instead of the males in his play behaviour? Because carrying sticks and stones on their back is popular play in young females, at least in chimpanzees.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
On a remote Panamanian island, capuchin monkeys began kidnapping baby howlers and carrying them for days. Nobody was on the island to witness the origin and spread of this strange social tradition. But camera traps were there: www.ab.mpg.de/677569/news_...
Study from @livingingroups.bsky.social ⬇️
An illustration of a white-faced capuchin monkey carrying a howler infant on their back while cracking nuts with a stone
Humans have many unusual traditions. But did you know animals’ strange behaviors can become culture too? Out now in Current Biology (doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...) we show the rise and spread of a surprising tradition: interspecies infant abduction. Interactive timeline (www.ab.mpg.de/671374) 🧵 (1/12)
Cross-species teamwork from @livingingroups.bsky.social reveals unexpected similarities in three social mammals 🤔
By lead author @pminasandra.bsky.social with Emily Grout, Katrina Brock, Meg Crofoot, Vlad Demartsev, Amlan Nayak, Eli
Strauss, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin🧵1/2
www.ab.mpg.de/679000/news_...
For German and French speakers interested in animal culture, this doco will be well worth 43 mins of your time. For everyone else, great tits solving puzzle boxes speak for themselves 🐦🧩🧠@lucymaplin.bsky.social @mchimento.bsky.social
www.arte.tv/de/videos/11...
Bonobo societies are famous for being “female dominant.” But females are weaker than males, so how can this be? Study by Barbara Fruth and Martin Surbeck on wild bonobos explains how.
Hint: it has to do with female solidarity.
Paper ▶️ www.nature.com/articles/s42...
www.ab.mpg.de/673281/news_...
More local to eastern northern Germany since this is a local beer from the island of Rügen
ICARUS BIRDS
Where, how, and why do birds die?
We are launching the ICARUS BIRDS project to find out! Join us in tracking common birds across Europe to uncover the factors behind their decline.
Learn more on our website: www.ab.mpg.de/icarus
Advertisement for study at Department of Ethology, Eotovos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary. Image includes face of black and brown dog with its nose buried in a blanket. Text reads: Why do you have a dog? We need your help! This questionnaire is part of a research project conducted at Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary. Our main goal is to identify factors associated with perceived (dis)advantages of sharing life with a companion dog.
🐶🐕🐩
My colleagues in the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) are conducting a survey of dog owners. So if you are a dog owner, please consider completing their survey at tally.so/r/nPXKPb.
#dogs
Sunset in the mountains of Bergen
