#ECBB2026 Angela Dassow opens our symposium on Leveraging new bioaccoustics advances for behaviour- informed conservation with her talk: Applications of real-time AI for conservation and human-wildlife coexistence

Join me at the annual conference of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) in Leeds on August 21, where I'll be giving a plenary talk on: "If language makes us human, where does that leave animals?" esssatconference.org/program/ @esssat.bsky.social

What an honour! This article in @theatlantic.com names "The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy" along with Carl Sagan's "Contact" and "Cosmos" as their choice of "Six Books That Take You to Space" www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

Six Books That Take You to Space

You won’t even have to leave your couch.

theatlantic.com

Honoured to be part of the judging committee for the 🐺🐭📣 COLLER DOLITTLE CHALLENGE FOR TWO-WAY INTERSPECIES COMMUNICATION The public Award Ceremony is 25 JUNE 2026 - register free: 👉 zoom.us/webinar/regi... to hear the amazing discoveries from this year’s finalists!

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...

Arik Kershenbaum: The Evolution of Communication in Animals and Humans | Episode 115

YouTube video by Brain Shaman

youtube.com

Will humans and animals ever be able to converse? Here’s what I say... www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Will humans and animals ever be able to converse? Here’s what science says.

In the movie Hoppers, scientists “hop” human consciousness into animal-like robots to talk to other species. We asked the experts their thoughts on how conceivable the plot is.

nationalgeographic.com

Read more about our project to map tiger risk by eavesdropping on the alarm calls of prey animals www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/news/eavesdr...

New documentary on PBS: Can Dogs Talk? www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi... Do "speech buttons" really allow our dogs to speak to us? I'm one of a number of scientists interviewed, and the answer is...

🚨🐯 BIG NEW PAPER OUT! 🐯🚨 "An autonomous network of acoustic detectors to map tiger risk by eavesdropping on prey alarm calls" 🐅🐅🐅🐅🐅 We used AI to do real-time detection of deer alarm calls and warn villagers when there's a tiger in the area zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

An autonomous network of acoustic detectors to map tiger risk by eavesdropping on prey alarm calls

Tiger population recovery brings with it increased fatalities from human-tiger conflict. We describe a network of autonomous intelligent passive acoustic sensors that monitor the forest for deer alar...

zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

📢How animals reveal secrets of our intelligence www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUfq... #AI, #LLM, and animal communication, with Tim El-Sheikh from The CEO Retort

Leading zoologist: How animals reveal secrets of our intelligence

YouTube video by The CEO Retort

youtube.com

I've just joined the scientific committee of the @CollerDolittle Prize coller-dolittle-24.sites.tau.ac.il offering $100,000 each year for scientific research that has used a non-invasive approach to communicate with or decipher an organism’s communication. Submit by the deadline of September 30th!

🐯🦌🔊Read about the amazing work we're doing in Nepal to prevent human-tiger conflict using AI devices that listen out for deer alarm calls! greatplainsfoundation.com/tiger-conser... And don't forget to watch the fantastic video by @Grizanderson www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnVL...

Tiger Conservation in Nepal: Real-Time Acoustic Monitoring for Coexistence - Great Plains Foundation

greatplainsfoundation.com

Once again, Star Trek nails social commentary. Even if the conflict in the Middle East is "over some piece of land", the reality is that "the basis for peace must be personal". Movements like @standing-together.bsky.social and Hand in Hand (www.handinhandk12.org) are building that peace.

📣Check out the Listening Fields podcast, where I talk to the fantastic Dr Vickie Pham about recording animals in the wild, meaning & information in animal calls, and how we use acoustic monitoring to aid conservation of critically endangered species 🐅 soundcloud.com/faderadio/li...

New paper! Using AI to track the frequency of vocalisations across a (very) wide range of species www.ricardmarxer.com/f0-bioacoust... In wolves, dolphins, etc, the up-down of frequency of their calls is where all the information is. Neural nets can do this automatically! ‪

Congratulations Dr ‪@simon-kershenbaum.bsky.social‬ on his first lead author paper 🎉http://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004225012969 Variation in phenotype, genotype, and somatic diversity among asexual Schmidtea mediterranea planarians

Just finished reading Ittay Flescher's remarkable book, "The Holy and the Broken". If you are tired of endless dehumanisation of both sides do come to his book launch at Girton College, Cambridge, on July 16th. Sign up on the link here actionnetwork.org/events/the-h... @ukfost.bsky.social

On July 16 I'll be hosting Ittay Flescher for a talk about his book "The Holy and the Broken" - how communities can work together to overcome the hatred and the destruction that we see around us in Israel and Palestine. 6:30 Girton College. Free. Book here: actionnetwork.org/events/the-h...

‪@brbbfreitas.bsky.social‬ ‪@frantsjensen.bsky.social‬ @arikkershenbaum.bsky.social‬ @malavika-m.bsky.social‬ @hollyhowls.bsky.social‬

There's been a lot of coverage in the media recently of AI and dolphin communication. Here's a good @sciam.bsky.social SciAm podcast that speaks to the actual scientists @drdherzing.bsky.social Denise Herzing about what they're doing. (and to me too) www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/epis...

An AI-Assisted Chat with Dolphins

A large language model for dolphin vocalization could let us better understand these beloved marine mammals

scientificamerican.com

A packed meeting to hear Amin Amara and Uri Weltmann, leaders of @ukfost.bsky.social Standing Together, speak about the role of a grassroots movement of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis in opposing the war in Gaza and in building a cooperative, multinational society.

Finally the book is published! PRIMATES IN PERIL: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates 2023–2025 Updated information about the cao vit gibbon! Link download: static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/120... www.facebook.com/share/p/1E6p...

A reminder of the meeting next week in Cambridge where you can hear from the leaders of Standing Together @standing-together.bsky.social working to bring together #Jewish and #Palestinian citizens of #Israel. Sign up on the link below: actionnetwork.org/events/build...

Building power through Jewish-Palestinian solidarity: Hear Standing Together leaders speak in Cambridge

UK Friends of Standing Together is proud to host Amin Amara and Uri Weltmann, two members of the Standing Together leadership, for a speaking tour in the UK. Standing Together is a grassroots social ...

actionnetwork.org

"Cold-blooded culture?" A great new paper out by my collegues Angela Dassow and Holly Root-Gutteridge @hollyhowls.bsky.social and others on the phenomenon of: 🦎🐍🐊🐢CULTURE IN REPTILES 🦎🐍🐊🐢 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Cold-blooded culture? Assessing cultural behaviour in reptiles and its potential conservation implications | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

It is becoming clear that the cognition of a species plays an important role in successful conservation, with cultural processes being a fundamental part of this. However, in contrast to mammals and b...

royalsocietypublishing.org

📣Cambridge, come hear Amin and Uri, two leaders of STANDING TOGETHER, a grassroots movenment that mobilises Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel against war, occupation, and racism. Thursday May 15 6pm, Woolf Institute, Cambridge actionnetwork.org/events/build... @ukfost.bsky.social

The pace of discoveries in the search for alien life is picking up. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... If you want to know more about what life will be like on other planets, The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy is a good place to start www.penguin.co.uk/books/314542... #scicomm #astrobiology

Scientists find promising hints of life on distant planet K2-18b

Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

bbc.co.uk

www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...

New AI Models Could Let Us Chat with Dolphins

Google is developing an LLM that could help us communicate with dolphins

scientificamerican.com

Another cool podcast, if you want to know more about animal communication 🦧📣 www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPGy... #scicom

Arik Kershenbaum - Why Animals Talk

YouTube video by A Fresh Face in Hell with Jonathan Evison

youtube.com

Here I am talking to Kensy Cooperrider of the @divintelligence.bsky.social podcast about animal communication and animal minds... 🧠 We take a detailed look at why animals make the sounds they make, and what that says about animal consciousness.

Many Minds podcast@manymindspod.bsky.social · 2y ago

New episode!! 📣📣 A chat w/ @arikkershenbaum.bsky.social about vocal communication in animals. The tree of life is a noisy place, bursting with howls, grunts, whines, snorts, and songs. What does it all mean? Does any of this hubbub merit the label of "language"? Listen: disi.org/howl-grunt-s...

🚨📣New paper alert! The jackals are coming! 🦊 We show how we've used a network of acoustic monitoring devices to pinpoint the locations of jackals, which are spreading through Romania and surrounding areas. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Acoustic Localisation as a Tool to Aid Monitoring of Golden Jackals (Canis aureus)

In this study, we tested the low-cost CARACAL recorder for acoustic localisation of golden jackals in Romania. We successfully detected and localised jackal howls, recommending an optimal recorder sp....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com