Drew Altschul
@dremalt.bsky.social
Lecturer in Psychology @ Newcastle University. Studying the evolution of hierarchies and hierarchical thinking, mostly in primates. Open science, BTS, ManyPrimates/ManyManys. Living organism. Psoriatic arthritic. Age dyschronic. Writer. Buddhist.
Recently finished reviewing a stage 1 @pci-regreports.bsky.social RR. Great experience. Not my first PCI recommendation process, but some things stood out. It felt like this is what reviewing ought to be. Ideally, all the time.
This is a beautiful read even if you haven’t read Piranesi. But all the more if you have.
Oliver K. Langmead@oliverklangmead.bsky.social · last mo.Susanna Clarke on illness www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...
Neat new paper on primate neurocognitive evolution, featuring the @manyprimates.bsky.social MP1 data!
Kai Caspar@nomascus.bsky.social · 2mo agoNew study on the evolution of primate cognition, brain size, sensory and motor functions, prompted by "recent work showing fishes perform as well as primates on various cognitive tests." 🐟🦍🧪 Great to see such broad comparative perspectives driving research. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
New paper fresh into In Press status, in Animal Behaviour: "Personality, age and sex differences in wild and zoo-housed Japanese macaques" doi.org/10.1016/j.an... Wee thread:
Redirecting
doi.org
This is the most disturbing thing I've read in a while
Shannon Vallor@shannonvallor.bsky.social · 3mo agoThis is horrible reading, and also wonderful reading, because its seething rage is so undeniably human
Cool phylogenetic study of adult play
Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró)@biotay.bsky.social · 3mo ago1/2 Adult play Although phylogeny predicts which primates play as adults (if play exists in one species, it is more likely to exist in close ones), it is whether or not the society is tolerant (and not despotic) that best predicts this behavior (paper) royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...
Hooray, its out! A lot of time and effort went into this, much kudos to @epronizius.bsky.social @mamsmandrill.bsky.social @vaidis.bsky.social et al
Ekaterina (Katja) Pronizius@epronizius.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew paper🎈: Lessons Learned from Big Team Science Projects in Cognitive Science in @collabrapsychology.bsky.social online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art... We share practical, experience-based strategies for running large-scale collaborations - from project structure to ethics, funding, & AI use.
1/2 Meditation has significant effects on the brain within 2–3 minutes, peaking at 7–10 minutes, regardless of the individual’s level of experience. The study used breath-watching (Isha Yoga) and EEG in 103 participants (paper) link.springer.com/article/10.1...
i will stake a strong claim and say that it is almost never a bad idea for you, a grad student, to roll up to a conference and just introduce yourself to people you'd like to talk to. profs absolutely love talking to students. just go for it!! we're nice!
The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me. It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."
More than just emotions, but... yeah
John Rogers@johnrogers.bsky.social · 4mo agoYou'll die full of ideas. If I threw myself 100% into just executing the stuff in my notebooks NOW, I'd never get through them in the 20-odd years I have left. Ideas are just boxes to hold the emotions you're trying to magically convey from your brain into strangers' brains.
Having spent many years living alongside degus, this is so clear. Glad its been proven.
Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró)@biotay.bsky.social · 5mo ago1/2 Rodents enjoy gnawing In this study, they find neurophysiological and functional evidence that there is a reinforcement circuit associated with dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. (paper) www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
It seems like every year or so I post about how E.M. Forster's sci-fi chestnut "The Machine Stops" (1909!!) foresaw an awful lot about our burgeoning dystopia. I'm compelled to post about it more and more, since it somehow only seems to become more prescient. www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7...
The Machine Stops - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
This is a basic and crucial point for any discussion of LLMs’ use in teaching research or writing. Whether it can ape us, fool us, or get facts right or wrong is, in the end, irrelevant. The LLM is not the thinker we are trying to encourage; the LLM is not the writer that we are trying to improve.
Anthony Moser@anthonymoser.com · 5mo agoi think enthusiastic LLM use is mostly a stack of cognitive biases, unacknowledged plagiarism, and unmet needs in a trenchcoat but also my main objections aren't about them being bad at tasks so i don't care if you think they've gotten better at it
Cute and funny dog video, but... is the dog doing behavioral imitation?? www.instagram.com/reel/DTM_yNR... Weigh in for me CE folks...
◇Levi◇ on Instagram: "I've actually made so much Improvement over the last 3 days! Day 1 I couldn't hold for even 1 sec away from the wall Yesterday i could barely hold 3 sec And today a bit longer!🤩...
46K likes, 198 comments - calisthenicslevi on January 7, 2026: "I've actually made so much Improvement over the last 3 days! Day 1 I couldn't hold for even 1 sec away from the wall Yesterday i could ...
instagram.com
Periodic reminder that without biodiversity, we’re all doomed. Let’s not brush it aside and focus solely on carbon (obviously critical). Focusing on carbon while sidelining biodiversity is a catastrophic mistake. Biodiversity isn’t optional. It’s fundamental to our very existence.
1/2 Ai, the chimpanzee who revolutionized science from Kyoto, has died at the age of 49. She was the first chimpanzee to learn Arabic numerals. Here you can see her in action in Tetsuro Matsuzawa's laboratory.
99% of cakes are far too sweet to be genuinely delicious
Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app · 7mo agoThis place needs some Innocuous Discourse pronto. Quote this with a take that’s not political or aggressive
“Auld Land Syne” on a Stylophone. #NewYearsEve
🚨 Our new paper is out!! A call for CARE in animal behaviour: an holistic ethical research framework 🐾💚 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A call for CARE in animal behaviour: an holistic ethical research framework
Despite increasing awareness of animal welfare, there are vast discrepancies between legal protections and recommended practices for different species…
sciencedirect.com
Cripes. They're using Cohen's outdated effect size standards, too. Should be using the revised versions, ala Funder and Ozer. >0.3 is a large effect size. >0.4 is huge, and these are the levels they're reporting at. This should not be downplayed, these are BIG effects.
Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró)@biotay.bsky.social · 8mo ago1/3 Short video social media and mental health This meta-analysis of 71 studies (n 98,299) found a correlation between the use of short video-based social media (TikTok, Instagram, etc.) and poorer mental health and cognition. (paper) psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
A story in logic: 'Are Lovecrafting Horrors really on the same level as AI slop?' 'Lovecraft's Cthulhu-esque creations are twisted, but in a biological way, as depicted in modern media. Like cancer.' ...... 'Is current generative AI a cancer?' ...... 'But then, a cancer of what?'
Shannon Vallor@shannonvallor.bsky.social · 9mo agoHappy Christmas nightmares, kids!
📢 New article out in PLOS BIology! It was truly a pleasure and honour be a part of the core team members to lead this study and work alongside 129 collaborators from 82 institutions across 24 countries - the largest ever comparative study of neophobia in 🐦! 🥰
A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia
Neophobia (the aversive response to novelty) varies considerably across species and individuals, and can impact adaptability and survival. This study assesses neophobia in 1400 subjects from 136 bird ...
journals.plos.org
ManyBirds Project@themanybirds.bsky.social · 10mo ago🐦 Exciting news! Our new paper is out in PLOS Biology: “A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia.” Led by the #ManyBirds Project - 129 researchers, 82 institutions, 24 countries 🌍 🔗 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... @themanybirds.bsky.social
This is so cool. Thanks for watching!
Big Team Science Conference@btscon.bsky.social · 10mo agoWe received this dispatch from a @uop-ccep.bsky.social @uopcidd.bsky.social BTSCON viewing party. Look at all the Big Team Science FUN they're having! WE LOVE TO SEE IT!! (👀 @dremalt.bsky.social @manyprimates.bsky.social)
We received this dispatch from a @uop-ccep.bsky.social @uopcidd.bsky.social BTSCON viewing party. Look at all the Big Team Science FUN they're having! WE LOVE TO SEE IT!! (👀 @dremalt.bsky.social @manyprimates.bsky.social)