🔊 Dr. Valente and I are guest editors of a Special Issue on Animal Sounds on Current Zoology! How do environment, social dynamics & biology shape acoustic communication? We'd love to hear your take, feel free to reach out! Deadline: 31 Dec. 👉 academic.oup.com/cz/pages/call-for-papers-animal-sounds

Special issue on Animal Sounds: Environmental, Social, and Biological Drivers of Acoustic Communication

Submission deadline: 31 December 2026 Publication date: April 2027 Animal sounds, including both airborne and substrate-borne signals, are widespread acro

academic.oup.com

Monkeys grooming dogs. Lemurs adopting other lemurs. A capuchin troop that raised a marmoset for 10 months. A new study of 427 cases suggests pet-keeping’s roots run deeper than Homo sapiens. 🐒🐾 #Primatology #AnimalBehavior #Evolution www.primatology.net/p/when-a-mon...

When a Monkey Adopts a Marmoset

What 427 recorded cases of primates grooming dogs, carrying squirrels and adopting other species reveal about the deep roots of pet-keeping

primatology.net

Our book, "Nature Beats" is finally out. It talks all about how we can study rhythm across species and what that can tell us about the evolution of music. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

A new study of great ape laughter also gives clues about how humans’ ancient ancestors started speaking.

Differences in human and great ape laughter reveal clues to the origin of speech

A new study of great ape laughter also gives clues about how humans’ ancient ancestors started speaking.

tcnv.link

The rhythmic patterns of laughter found in apes and humans reveal that complex primate vocal control might have started evolving 15 million years ago go.nature.com/4eO0lkT

Oo oo, ha ha: why humans and great apes giggle alike when tickled

The rhythmic patterns of laughter found in apes and humans reveal that complex primate vocal control might have started evolving 15 million years ago.

go.nature.com

Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for at least 15 million years, suggests study in @commsbio.nature.com. Findings suggest laughter has become faster, more variable, and increasingly influenced by the situation it occurs in. 🧪 #evosky #evolution

Rhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum - Communications Biology

Comparative analysis of laughter rhythm across all extant great apes reveals that isochrony is ancestral to hominids, with tempo, variability, and context-sensitivity increasing progressively toward humans, tracing a continuum of vocal plasticity.

spklr.io

Orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimps, and humans all laugh with the same underlying beat — and new research shows this rhythmic structure dates back 15 million years to our last common ancestor. #Language #Linguistics #Primatology #PrimateVocalCommunication #Anthropology

The Rhythm in Ape Laughter Is 15 Million Years Old

A new comparative study finds that the timing structure of laughter has been conserved across all living great apes since before the hominid lineage began to diverge.

primatology.net

Before there was speech, there was laughter! Our new study traces the evolution of laughter across the great apes and reveals a gradual increase in vocal flexibility over millions of years. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Rhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum - Communications Biology

Comparative analysis of laughter rhythm across all extant great apes reveals that isochrony is ancestral to hominids, with tempo, variability, and context-sensitivity increasing progressively toward h...

nature.com

🔊 Dr. Valente and I are guest editors of a Special Issue on Animal Sounds on Current Zoology! How do environment, social dynamics & biology shape acoustic communication? We'd love to hear your take, feel free to reach out! Deadline: 31 Dec. 👉 academic.oup.com/cz/pages/call-for-papers-animal-sounds

Special issue on Animal Sounds: Environmental, Social, and Biological Drivers of Acoustic Communication

Submission deadline: 31 December 2026 Publication date: April 2027 Animal sounds, including both airborne and substrate-borne signals, are widespread acro

academic.oup.com

Sing loud, sing rhythmically! And grow up singing! Third paper in a row! One of the most insightful papers of the last few years is finally out! Congrats to the whole team! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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

Lovely coverage of our latest work, thanks Becca!

Becca Dzombak@rdzombak.bsky.social · 5mo ago

For some butterflies, only those with a sense of rhythm can survive. That's because they need to be adopted by ant colonies as caterpillars to make in. Caterpillars mimic ants' sounds to get carried inside, and a new study explores rhythm's role in that. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/s...

NEW PAPER! Do 🐛 use rhythm to trick 🐜? We analysed vibroacoustic signals from ants and butterflies with different myrmecophily levels. Ants and highly associated species share regular rhythms — suggesting convergent adaptation in tight mutualisms. nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

NYAS Publications

Myrmecophilous butterflies evolved diverse adaptations to communicate with ants, including acoustic ones. We analyzed the rhythmic properties of vibroacoustic signals in two ant and nine butterfly sp...

nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

New paper out! 👉 doi.org/10.1002/ajp.... Indri lemurs are Critically Endangered and have never survived nor reproduced in captivity. Understanding how infants develop behaviour and diet may be a key piece for their conservation in the wild. @marcogamba.bsky.social

Abstract (and travel award) submission deadline has been extended to the 7th of January 2026. Don’t miss the chance to submit your contribution and be part of the scientific program of ISBE2026!

Our new paper is out! Orangutan long calls are strongly isochronous, yet surprisingly they can also shift into double-meter patterns — a small but intriguing clue to the roots of musical rhythm. doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

We are happy to announce that registration for ISBE2026 is now open! We encourage you to register as soon as possible to take advantage of reduced fees and to plan your trip and accommodation in advance. Please read the information on www.isbe2026.com before proceeding with your registration.

Meet our plenary speaker Renata Sousa-Lima! Professor at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil), Renata ‘s research focuses on bioacoustics of aquatic mammals and has pioneered the field of ecoacoustics and soundscape ecology in Brazil.

The Local Organizing Commitee welcomes behavioral ecologists from across the world and of all career stages to enjoy a five-day meeting rich in top-notch science and ample networking opportunities in Turin (Italy), 20-24 July 2026.

"Complexity doesn’t always need words. The rhythms, patterns and structures we have uncovered in orangutan alarms remind us that meaningful communication can emerge in many forms, and that the roots of our language may lie not just in what is said, but how it is expressed"

What the hidden rhythms of orangutan calls can tell us about language – new research

Recursion was thought to be a unique feature of human language.

theconversation.com

Orangutans organize alarm calls using recursive rhythms—layered like Russian dolls—revealing cognitive roots of language once thought unique to humans. #Anthropology #Primates #LanguageEvolution #Orangutans #Recursion

The Rhythms of the Forest: Orangutan Calls and the Evolutionary Roots of Language

How Sumatran Apes Taught Scientists a New Way to Think About Human Communication

primatology.net

Out today in Ann NY Acad Sci: orangutans show third-order rhythmic nesting in alarm calls—like music, rhythms within rhythms within rhythms. They adjust tempo and rhythm by threat type: faster for credible threats 🐯, slower for less credible alarms 🔵. doi.org/10.1111/nyas...

NLP may arise from both physiological constraints and communicative functions, with sexual dimorphism and age patterns hinting at additional selective pressures. ➡️ Check out the full article on the new Phil Trans B issue: doi.org/10.1098/rstb...

Have the courage to look them in the face! Because their faces can tell us a lot! Filippo and Dayanna made a massive effort and studied the faces of cotton-top tamarins with deep learning—a striking step for our visual communication studies! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The indri, a critically endangered lemur only found in Madagascar’s rainforest, might hold clues about the human knack for musicality, a Mongabay video explains. Watch the full video: “What singing lemurs can tell us about the origin of music” news.mongabay.com/video/2025/0...

Published today! Here we show how social life shapes musical timing in a duetting monkey... and how hard is singing while parenting! 🙈 🎶 doi.org/10.1098/rspb... @marcogamba.bsky.social