Congratulations to @prateek754 from the @SNLab2002 in the @Psych_UAlberta who won an Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize!

Our WEISEST students, Shahd and Samantha, supervised by the excellent Moriah Deimeke and Prateek Sahu, presented their final poster today! Funding generously provided by NSERC, CRC, the Government of Alberta, Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science.

The amazing Prateek Sahu & Moriah Deimeke from @SNLab2002 @Psych_UAlberta along with two equally amazing @WISESTualberta students made this app to see sound! bcch.art Funded by @NSERC_CRSNG @TIPS_SPIIE @YourAlberta @ualbertaScience @UAlbertaArts @Psych_UAlberta

Congratulations, @prateek754 and the rest of the @SNLab2002 from @Psych_UAlberta on a fab new paper in @iScience_CP ! Sahu, P.K., et al. Vocal consistency is associated with auditory perceptual ability in a songbird. Manuscript to appear in iScience.

Congratulations to @prateek754 and the rest of the @SNLab2002 members in @Psych_UAlberta on a great new publication in @BiologyOpen ! Funded by @NSERC_CRSNG @TIPS_SPIIE @YourAlberta @ualbertaScience @UAlbertaArts !!!

Congratulations to Sarah Smeltz who defended their MSc today! Funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) Government of Alberta University of Alberta Faculty of Science and Faculty of Arts !

Patrick in action at the 2026 @OfficialCSBBCS conference at York University! Funding provided by @NSERC_CRSNG @TIPS_SPIIE @YourAlberta @ualbertaScience

Ph.D. student Prateek Sahu interviewed by @raspberrypi.com about songbird preference testing setup the SNL developed “Raspberry Pi reveals songbirds’ favourite sounds” raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry… @psychualberta.bsky.social

Congratulations to Katie Stenstrom for winning the Comparative Cognition Society #CO3_2026 Best Poster Award (photos by Sarah Smeltz).

Prateek Sahu and Moriah Deimeke presenting at Comparative Cognition Society #CO3

Sarah Smeltz and Katie Stenstom from the @SNLab2002 present their posters at the first poster session of #CO3_2026 Comparative Cognition Society.

MSc student Sarah Smeltz from the Songbird Neuroethology Laboratory and the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta won the Comparative Cognition Society best publication by a graduate student award at the Conference on Comparative Cognition (photo: Mo Deimeke).

Listen to Songbird Neuroethology Lab and Department of Psychology PhD student, Prateek Sahu, tell CBC/Radio-Canada about what makes birdsong sexy! lnkd.in/gamqZyKK

The @SNLab2002 @Psych_UAlberta presented posters, @prateek754 gave a talk, and Maki won best undergraduate poster!

Moriah Deimeke graduated with their M.Sc. in Psychology from @psychualberta.bsky.social yesterday!

A new Registered Report Protocol by Prateek Sahu, @cbsturdy.bsky.social and colleagues pre-registers tests of whether female zebra finches prefer “long path length” songs, in order to re-examine earlier claims that this holistic song feature signals male quality.

Re-examining hidden fitness: Female preferences for long-path songs in zebra finches

Female songbirds can evaluate male quality from secondary sexual characteristics such as songs. Studies have shown mixed findings on which acoustic features contribute to song attractiveness. In a…

plos.io

Congratulations to @prateek754 and the rest of the members from @SNLab2002 in @psychualberta.bsky.social who just had a new registered report accepted to appear in PLOS ONE! Funded by #NSERC_CRSNG #TIPS_SPIIE @ @ualbertascience.bsky.social @youralberta.bsky.social

Congratulations to Sarah Smeltz from the Songbird Neuroethology Laboratory who won best student paper from the Comparative Cognition Society!

Froze my ass off at the Iowa City anti-ICE rally, but it was worth it

The Songbird Neuroethology Lab turns 24 today! It has been great fun to get to work with such an amazing group of people over the years.

Congratulations to Katie Stenstrom and the rest of the lab on an excellent new publication!

Congratulations to @kt_stenstrom and the rest of the #SNLab2002 in @psychualberta.bsky.social on an excellent new publication! Funded gratefully by #NSERC_CRSNG #TIPS_SPIIE and @ualbertascience.bsky.social !

Congratulations to #jennacongdon and the rest of the #SongbirdNeuroethologyLab members in @psychualberta.bsky.social on an excellent new publication! Funded generously provided by #NSERC_CRSNG !

Applications for MA, MSc and PhD programs in Psychology @ualberta.bsky.social are now open! For application information and FAQ, please visit our website below. Deadline December 1st. Join us! www.ualberta.ca/en/psycholog...

A government under seven (7) different investigations for corruption just introduced a bill that would bring more corporate money into politics. This is not normal. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Alberta overhauls election laws to allow corporate donations, change referendum thresholds | CBC News

The Alberta government wants to bring back corporate and union political donations, eliminate vouching for a voter’s identity at election polling stations, and lower the threshold for recalls and refe...

cbc.ca

First author should be Smeltz! (Sarah M.L.) -- thank you @cbsturdy.bsky.social for correcting that

animal prattle@animal-prattle.bsky.social · last yr.

Caller ID: Meltz et al. (@cbsturdy.bsky.social) show black-capped chickadees learn to discriminate chickadee calls by individual in go/no-go task but don't generalize to feebee calls Suggests they may use more context info in wild onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics

Caller ID: Meltz et al. (@cbsturdy.bsky.social) show black-capped chickadees learn to discriminate chickadee calls by individual in go/no-go task but don't generalize to feebee calls Suggests they may use more context info in wild onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics

Individual Discrimination Within, but Not Between, Two Vocalization Types of the Black‐Capped Chickadee

Black-capped chickadees' chick-a-dee calls and fee-bee songs are individually distinct. We used an operant conditioning Go/No-go paradigm to train chickadees to discriminate among four individuals' c...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

www.thetimes.com/uk/history/a...

Oxford dons ‘drank wine from skull of a slave woman’

A silver chalice made with a sawn-off human skull was used regularly at formal dinners at Worcester College until 2015, according to a museum curator

thetimes.com

As Canada buckles down to protect its sovereignty, try to remember that Pierre Poilievre hand-delivered coffee and donuts to violent insurrectionists who wanted to overthrow the federal government and called for the murder of the Prime Minister.

Evolving language: - Reports that HAQERS -- human-ancestor quickly evolved regions, acquired after split from chimpanzees -- influence language not general cognition - Via altered behind of Forkhead transcription factors (eg FOXP2) - Finds HAQERS-like seqs in other vocal learners #prattle 💬

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 2y ago

Rapidly evolved genomic regions shape individual language abilities in present-day humans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.07.641231v1