We are offering 3 #PhD positions in our Ecology of Animal Societies Department @livingingroups.bsky.social at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior - check them out! imprs-qbee.mpg.de/66685/current

Current

imprs-qbee.mpg.de

Our paper on how orangutan mothers plan and alter their space use at personal costs so their offspring may play with similarly aged offspring (independent of kinship and fruit productivity) has transitioned from preprint to peer reviewed publication doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Maternal ranging strategies facilitate offspring social play at energetic cost in the most solitary ape | PNAS

In most vertebrates, social play among peers is considered essential for behavioral development. Yet in solitary species bearing single offspring, ...

doi.org

Social play is key for development in many animals, yet how solitary species with single young acquire playmates has remained a quandary. We unlock this using long-term data from 31 Bornean orangutan mother-offspring pairs in our new publication in PNAS. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2621225123. 🧵

📢 The Call for Abstracts for the Culture Conference 2027 is OPEN! 🗓️ Deadline: 30 November 2026 We welcome submissions from all career stages and relevant disciplines. 🔎Details & submission info: culture-conference.com/abstract-sub... Keynote speakers will be announced soon - stay tuned!

Abstract Submission

We invite participants to submit their abstracts by 30 November 2026. Please submit your abstract by email to: ccp_cultureconference2027@eva.mpg.de When submitting your abstract, please indicate wh…

culture-conference.com

I am recruiting a PhD student to work with our group at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior! Learn more & apply here: tinyurl.com/kd4xx4ku Deadline: 15 Nov 2026 Start date: Flexible (summer-fall 2027) @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @livingingroups.bsky.social @carlzeissstiftung.bsky.social

“Huh?” “I meant...” “What?” 💬 When interacting with each other, we often fix errors or mishearings through communicative repair, which restores progressivity. Our ✨ new paper ✨ asks: what do chimpanzees do when an initial gestural request does not land during an interaction? 🧵 1/4 bit.ly/4rSQosE

When grooming stalls: Assessing communicative repair, negotiation, and progressivity in chimpanzees

Communication; Animal behavior; Zoology

cell.com

Do chimpanzees value their friendships enough to pass on juicy pineapple? In our new paper, out now at Evolution and Human Behavior, we find that they do! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New year, new conference! Registration for the next Annual Meeting of the Ethological Society is officially open! 🤩 Save the date, sign up, and join us in beautiful Konstanz 24–27 February, 2027 @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social www.ab.mpg.de/etho-2027

Graceful Deer Hopping at Sunset

ALT: Graceful Deer Hopping at Sunset

static.klipy.com

I am part of a team guest editing a special issue of the American Journal of Primatology on "Digitization and use of legacy datasets in primatology” and we are seeking out submissions due on 1 September 2027. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal...

Why care about weird animal behaviors? Just out as an advanced publication, my contribution to the next Frans de Waal special issue in Behaviour @degruyterbrill.bsky.social. Unusual behaviors are a recurring theme in my career, and I much enjoyed writing this perspective! doi.org/10.1163/1568...

The science of the unusual: how rare observations reveal the diversity of animal behaviour

Abstract Behavioural biology often focuses on identifying general patterns, yet unusual or rare behaviours at both the population and individual level can provide insight into animal behaviour. Here, ...

doi.org

Sumatran orangutans have a long, long childhood (8 yrs!) but there's a lot to learn. This week on the @science.org podcast, we hear about how social and individual learning interact to shape ecological competence in orangutans w/ Elah Feder & Revathe Thillaikumar www.science.org/content/podc...

!! New in @science.org !! How do animals learn broad skills necessary for survival in the wild? Our latest study on wild Sumatran orangutans at Suaq provides answers. 1/11 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

How 8 years of social and individual learning interact to shape ecological competence in orangutans

Cultural learning permeates human skill and knowledge acquisition. To understand its importance for nonhuman apes, we analyzed just under 7000 records of behavioral bouts of social and individual lear...

science.org

📣🎓 Open #PhD Position (3.5 years) 🎓📣 Want to come work with me on culture and social bonds in apes? 🐵 Apply to join my new group in the @livingingroups.bsky.social at @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social. Full job posting: imprs-qbee.mpg.de/131133/cultu... Deadline 📅 23 October 2026 Please share widely!

www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

Using AI to ‘talk to animals’ might make us feel clever – but what, if anything, does it do for them?

As animal behaviorists increasingly use AI in their research, they grapple with how to wield the technology responsibly

theguardian.com

‼️Field work position ‼️ We are looking for a research assistant for chimpanzee field work in Cote d'Ivoire, starting November. 🐵🌳📹 Have field experience, speak French, and want to study chimps with us? Take a look and reach out!

🧬🐬 Culture may leave a molecular footprint. Our new study on Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins @researchdolphin.bsky.social explores how a socially learned behaviour — sponging— may be reflected in DNA methylation. OA: doi.org/10.1098/rstb... Hosted by a Phil Trans B special issue:

Interested in doing a PhD in philosophy of animal minds in lovely Murcia? We have just published a call for expressions of interest to do a PhD as part of our research project on ecological validity in comparative cognitive science. Please consider applying if this is up your street!

Call for expressions of interest: PhD position

The Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation is about to publish a call for pre-doctoral scholarships (FPI) adhered to scientific projects that have been approved for funding in 2026. We invite …

ecologicalvalidity.wordpress.com

Interested in a postdoc at the University of Konstanz - maybe even to work with us on active sensing/bioacoustics/collective behaviour? Non-discipline specific postdoc fellowships @zukunftskolleg.bsky.social www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll... 12th October deadline!

Excited to share our new publication in Bioacoustics today, describing the vocal repertoire of white-nosed coatis! 🐾 We combined traditional acoustic analyses with an unsupervised approach to characterise the complexity and diversity of their vocal behaviour. doi.org/10.1080/0952...

📣 📣 📣 UPDATE: The 2026-2027 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resource! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

ecoevojobs.net 2026-27

docs.google.com

I wrote a little something on the value of philosophy for animal cognition. Out now in Science’s Expert Voices column.

Science is based on assumptions. Philosophy can make sure they’re the right ones.

When I was a postdoctoral researcher, I spent several years teaching at an interdisciplinary research institute in Vienna, Austria. There, my main course sought to train master’s students—mostly biolo...

science.org

🚨📢 New preprint w/ Dennis Papadopoulos & @marlenfroehlich.bsky.social A Joint Action Toolset framework for comparative research on joint action: osf.io/preprints/ps... 👇 Instead of asking if animals possess human forms of joint action, JAT quantifies species-specific coordination tools ⚒️

Imagine you are a white-faced capuchin monkey on Jicarón island learning how to use stone tools 🔨 Your mother does not use tools, so who do you turn to as a model? Our new manuscript answering this question is out now in Animal Behaviour @asab.org. doi.org/10.1016/j.an.... A 🧵 of our findings (1/10)

I love child-inclusive archaeology so much. It *seems* obvious that kids would have directly or indirectly affected a lot of the material past we look at but it really has taken a sea change of feminist practice for anyone to even ask the questions!

Dr. Abigail Desmond@abigaildesmond.bsky.social · 2mo ago

15,000 years ago, in one of the the earliest settled communities in the world, a child collected fine clay from the slow-moving river by her home. She then committed an act familiar to all inveterate play-doh enthusiasts; rolling and and pinching the squishy clay into tiny round balls.

New exciting postdoc position with @christophvoelter.bsky.social within our new FWF emerging fields project share.eva.mpg.de/index.php/s/...

Ever noticed how in a tense situation, a reassuring touch can help calm things down? New research from our Department of Psychology suggests reassuring touch could be an evolutionary tool dating back over six million years.  tinyurl.com/2r3v74k6

Would chimpanzees or bonobos huddle before a penalty shootout in the World Cup? 🐵⚽ In both species, reassuring body contact promotes social tolerance, read more in our new study led by Jake Brooker out now in @royalsociety.org Proc B. (doi.org/10.1098/rspb...) A thread of the main findings 🧵 (1/10)

🚨New Study Out🚨 In #MolecularEcology we used a new method to measure #DNAmethylation NON-INVASIVELY in wild capuchin monkeys 🐒🧬 We show that epithelial gut cells from feces encode species, age and sex, and can be used to build #aging clocks, run EWAS, and more onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Non‐Invasive Measures of <fc>DNA</fc> Methylation Capture Molecular Aging in Wild Capuchin Monkeys

Elucidating the socio-ecological factors that shape patterns of aging in long-lived vertebrates is of broad interest to evolutionary biologists, geroscientists, and ecologists. However, research on a...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

We are excited to announce that #Behaviour2027 (XXXIX International Ethological Congress) will be taking place in Vienna, Austria! We are looking forward to having you all join us next year from August 23-27. Please follow and share!

One reason I like Bayeisan stats is that you can model the importance of rare event's like this and why i find ways to fit Gamma, zero-augmented Gamma, and zero-augmented Beta distributions at all costs. "Rare events of great biological import likely live in the tails of probability distributions"

Alan McElligott@amcell.bsky.social · 3mo ago

2026. A 2100‐km jaguar journey redefines mobility and large‐scale conservation priorities during large carnivore dispersal. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....