I started putting the journal name at the end of my login ID to keep them all straight.

Wolf Presence Disrupts Seasonal Variation in Hair Cortisol Among Free‐Ranging Beef Cattle Predators exert indirect effects on prey populations beyond direct predation, but how predator reintroduction restructures prey physiology remains poorly understood. Using hair cortisol analysis in c...

Huge thanks to coauthors-authors @pritcharda.bsky.social @vanditto.bsky.social Rose Blersch, Brenda McCowan, Ken Tate, and Tina Saitone and our army of undergrads who help process the hair samples. Full text at onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Important caveat: only 3 wolf-exposed herds. Credible intervals are wide. We treat this as preliminary evidence, not a definitive answer — but a compelling reason to keep looking. 👀 7/8

This suggests wolf presence may interfere with normal physiological regulation itself — a subtler signal than a simple stress response. 6/8

Two-panel line graph showing estimated hair cortisol (pg/mg, log scale) vs. average daily minimum temperature, split by winter (left) and summer (right). Unexposed herds (yellow/solid) show a negative relationship; wolf-exposed herds (red/dashed) show a positive relationship, illustrating the inverted temperature-cortisol pattern. Observed data points and 95% credible interval ribbons are shown.

The finding wasn’t what you might expect. Wolf-exposed cattle didn’t just have higher cortisol. Instead, they showed a disrupted relationship between temperature and cortisol, ja pattern that was inverted compared to unexposed herds. 5/8

Line graph showing estimated hair cortisol concentration (pg/mg, log scale) declining as average daily minimum temperature increases (6–13°C), for summer and winter sampling periods in unexposed cattle. Ribbons show 95% credible intervals.

One underappreciated factor in hair cortisol research: temperature. Ambient temperature drives cortisol accumulation in hair, which means any study ignoring it risks misreading the signal entirely. So we looked closely. 🌡️ 4/8

We sampled 79 free-ranging beef cattle across 9 herds in California’s Sierra Nevada — 3 exposed to the Lassen Wolf Pack, 6 unexposed. This is the first study to use hair cortisol to examine wolf–cattle interactions. 3/8

Do cattle experience physiological stress when wolves are nearby, even without direct attacks? To find out, we used hair cortisol, in an attempt to capture long-term stress hormone accumulation rather than a snapshot response. 2/8

Cattle encounter gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the study area in California's Sierra Nevada. Top: A B. taurus bull and a member of the Lassen Wolf Pack (Canis lupus). Bottom: A first calf heifer (B. taurus) and a member of the Lassen Wolf Pack. Image credit: K.W. Tate and T.L. Saitone.

New paper out in Ecology & Evolution! 🐺🐄 We were invited to collaborate on this project based on the McCowan-Vandeleest lab’s work using hair cortisol as a welfare indicator in non-human primates — a method we’re now bringing to a very different species and ecology. 🧵 1/8 @vanditto.bsky.social

The white flag, aka the official flag of the Confederacy

Wishing you and yours a very merry Confederate Surrender Day.

Six-panel composite figure. Caption: Interactive artifacts always rely on people’s interpretive and interactional practices. Rowwise from top left to bottom right: A. Aegeus consults the oracle at Delphi (cup from Vulci, 440-430 BCE). B. Byzantine mosaic depicting the zodiac, from the floor of the 6th century CE Beth Alpha synagogue. C. One-sided sense-making in an experimental psychotherapy session, (McHugh 1968). D. Still from a BBC documentary showing a person interacting with ELIZA via a computer terminal, late 1960s. E. Researchers interacting with the PARC copier (Suchman 2007 [1987]). F. Screenshot of large language model chat interface, 2026.

New! Interactional foundations for critical AI literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Why do Anthropic engineers talk to Claude as a witch-doctor to his potions? How is prompt engineering like spider divination? Can one reason without reasons?

ft. Lovelace, Adorno, Suchman, Weizenbaum & many more ☺️

The evolution of human infants’ helplessness: unique, relational, and long-lasting developmental implications Abstract. Although human infants’ helplessness is largely overlooked in developmental science, it has attracted considerable attention in comparative anthr

Another, new paper on the relevance of human infants' early helplessness for social development, this time by Hammond et al:

The evolution of human infants’ helplessness: unique, relational, and long-lasting developmental implications doi.org/10.1093/cdpe...

The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter The phrase Man the Hunter is associated with disparate meanings across communities of scholars, journalists, and the public, which has led to unnecess…

"Man the Hunter" is often conflated with Dart's "killer ape theory"; A pity because, though imperfect, the MTH conference was a departure from previous Hobbesian colonial Hunter-Gatherer narratives.

In this new Target Article we map out some of that intellectual history.

"we present a historical summary of the ape culture wars since their inception and how this has evolved over time. We then focus on debates surrounding wild versus captive-ape research with an emphasis on culture, detailing major arguments arising from both research domains"
doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Social status as a developmental process in wild vervet monkeys: beyond maternal inheritance - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology - Among cercopithecine primates, female offspring often inherit maternal rank (i.e., achieve a rank adjacent to their mothers) due to either direct intervention...

Chloé Vilette & Christina Nord (co-first authors), Tyler Bonnell, Marcus Dostie, Richard McFarland, Christopher Young, Peter Henzi & Louise Barrett. Out now in Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

7/7
Rank acquisition in vervets is a flexible developmental process, not passive inheritance. New to Bayesian generalized additive models? We include an interpretation guide in our supplementary materials. static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10...

Fig. 8 Line graph showing the difference between offspring and maternal standardized Elo-ratings from 0 to 5 years. Dashed lines represent offspring of low-ranking mothers (positive values, ranking above mothers); solid lines represent offspring of high-ranking mothers (negative values, ranking below mothers). A dashed horizontal line marks zero difference. Sex differences emerge after ~2.5 years among offspring of low-ranking mothers.

6/7
That asymmetry is clear when you look at the rank gap between mothers and offspring over time. High-ranking mothers stayed above their offspring; low-ranking mothers were often overtaken. (Fig. 8)

Fig. 7 Line graph showing the association between maternal and offspring standardized Elo-ratings at the end of the juvenile period (~4 years). Purple and orange lines show smoothed trends for males and females. A diagonal black line represents perfect rank correspondence. Offspring of high-ranking mothers track the diagonal closely; offspring of low-ranking mothers show a flat, weak relationship.

5/7
So does rank still track maternal rank? Only partially. Offspring of high-ranking mothers converged on their mothers' rank by ~4 years, but offspring of low-ranking mothers often surpassed theirs. (Fig. 7)

Fig. 4 Two bar charts showing maternal proximity during aggression. Panel a: mothers were absent in 17,515 interactions when offspring was the aggressor, present in only 393. Panel b: mothers were absent in 17,668 interactions when offspring was the recipient, present in only 240.

4/7
Mothers were also rarely nearby during aggression — present in under 2% of interactions. And proximity to their offspring declined steadily across development regardless of sex. (Fig. 4)

Fig. 3 Two bar charts showing coalition support by mothers. Panel a: when offspring was the aggressor, mothers provided support once out of 3,744 coalitions. Panel b: when offspring was the victim, mothers provided support zero times out of 3,530 observed coalitions.

3/7
We then asked: do mothers actually intervene in their offspring's fights? Out of 3,744 coalitions, mothers supported their offspring as aggressor exactly once. When offspring were victims — zero times. (Fig. 3)

Fig. 2 Line graph showing juvenile vervet monkey standardized Elo-ratings from 0 to 5 years of age. Purple and orange lines represent average males and females respectively, with shaded 95% credible intervals. Dashed lines show offspring of low-ranking mothers, solid lines show offspring of high-ranking mothers. Ratings dip around 1.5 years before rising, with high-ranking offspring trending higher by age 4–5.

2/7
First, we tracked how juveniles' own aggression developed over time. Rates rose with age, and offspring of high-ranking mothers initiated more aggression — but sex differences in rank didn't follow. (Fig. 2)

1/7
New paper in Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology: do juvenile vervet monkeys inherit their mothers' dominance rank — and if so, how? We followed 3 birth cohorts across 5 years to find out. 🧵 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The social circumstances of the maternal experience and its biobehavioral associations, in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) Motherhood is a physiologically and behaviorally demanding process. We sought to examine how such changes might be expected to alter a mother’s social…

In a seasonally breeding primate, how much does the shared experience of motherhood alter behavior? We examined social behaviors, connectivity, and markers of health across reproductive phases.

Read about the maternal experience in Animal Reproduction Science!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This article was a really fun synthesis, out now! I bridged meta-analyses for the current state of interrater reliability in primate personality research with expectations simulated off of how we collect ratings and measure their reliability.

doi.org/10.1037/com0...

“We suggest that an even more radical step is required:viz, that cognition encompasses all of the processes that guide and control behaviour as the animal responds to the challenges of surviving and reproducing.That is, cognition is not a distinct phenomenon separable from sensory-motor capacities.”

With or without you: common marmoset, Callithrix jacchus, personality expression is mediated by social setting Animal personality has been studied in many solitary and socially living taxa, but the effect of conspecifics on the individuals' personality expressi…

🐒 With or without you? 🤔

📌 A recent study shows how the presence of conspecifics affects the #personality expression of #marmosets. 🤩

#animalbehaviour #primates #sociality #callithrix

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

Let’s be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel Trump’s most brazen attack on free speech yet.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

Tweet From Obama mentioning my firing from the Washington post. Wirh a photo of me

The last political column I was allowed to write in the @washingtonpost.com was a criticism of Obama.

His people took issue with my piece, but we were respectful.

Now he is tweeting in support of me.

This is how free political speech and respect for debate *actually works*.

Or used to work.

Decoupling Design from Darwinian and Skinnerian Selection - Perspectives on Behavior Science Darwin explained how seemingly purposeful and foresightful design could be decoupled from natural selection. Skinner followed suit for selection by reinforcement. Together with cultural selection, the...

A nice and thought-provoking paper by Ed Wassernan, on #mentalism and #behaviorism, and some cultural selection: link.springer.com/article/10.1...