We’re keeping our TRICK OR DONATE game going this week! We need your donations to support students in need. Now you can use your donation to vote for your favourite spooky animal! We’ll post fun facts about our winner at the end of the week👻 opencollective.com/animal-behaviour-collective

Animal Behaviour Collective - Open Collective

opencollective.com

Animal Behaviour Collective@abcmicrogrants.bsky.social · last wk.

TRICK OR DONATE !!! We’ll share updates here so you can watch the Vampire Bat, Piranha, and Tasmanian Devil battle it out for 1st place! Your donations power our next microgrant round! Donate here: opencollective.com/animal-behav... HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

TRICK OR DONATE !!! We’ll share updates here so you can watch the Vampire Bat, Piranha, and Tasmanian Devil battle it out for 1st place! Your donations power our next microgrant round! Donate here: opencollective.com/animal-behav... HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Our latest microgrant funding round is ongoing! The deadline to apply is the 30th of October. Spread the word, and donate if you can! Student microgrants are only possible because of each donation to ABC! For more information and to apply and donate: opencollective.com/animal-behaviour-collective

Mentee Sign-Up Sheet (link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...) Mentor Sign-Up Sheet (link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...)

Funded 3.5 year PhD🎺 The effects of gamebird release and management on the lowland ecosystems of S England Lots of fieldwork. A robust and resilient student is required. Focus on reptiles and ecto-parasites Any Qs, please DM or email me Please RT www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Join us for your bachelor or master projects on Japanese macaque affect & cognition at the Affenberg Research Station in Austria. Details in the photo 👇 Write to us: affenberg.lewi@univie.ac.at / debottam.bhattacharjee@uni-goettingen.de Project abstract link: gepris.dfg.de/project/5630...

Super mega stocked to share this ⭐new review ⭐ on the impact of urbanisation on social learning. tinyurl.com/2pt6s6zs

I'm so excited to finally see the special issue "Addressing Biases in Animal Behaviour" fully published: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu.... Huge thanks to my brilliant co-editors @viveknityananda.bsky.social & @nicolakoyama.bsky.social. Special issue grew from @asab.org's 2024 Winter Meeting 🧵

Our latest microgrant funding round is open now! 📢 Below is a reminder of what we do and don't fund. This round closes October 30th! Want to help us support students? Please spread the word, and donate if you can! For more informaition and to apply: opencollective.com/animal-behaviour-collective

Fantastic to see ABC mentor @williamohearn.bsky.social and his former mentee @giuliaseverino.bsky.social at @ecbb2026.bsky.social! Huge congratulations to Giulia for winning the #ECBB2026 Best Early Career Primate Presentation Prize! 👏🐒 Follow us to hear about our next mentorship-matching events 🤝

Got caught by surprise with the award! Thank you @ecbb2026.bsky.social !! Forgot to take a photo of my poster, but here's a glimpse of it featuring the showstopper Paul. ✨😁

ARAA@araa.at · 2mo ago

So proud that two of our ARAA folk won awards at #ECBB2026! 🤩🥰 Congrats to @annaek.bsky.social and @awanib.bsky.social 🙌

Growing up demands the right cognitive toolkit at the right time 🧠 We show cognitive development over key life transitions from ontogeny to adulthood in wild meerkats. 🚨 Read our new findings👇🏼 doi.org/10.1098/rspb... Great Thanks to @royalsocietypublishing.org @templetonworld.bsky.social @snsf.ch

Cognitive abilities show distinct developmental trajectories in wild meerkats

Abstract. Understanding cognitive development is fundamental for explaining variation in adult cognitive phenotypes, and thus the processes driving cogniti

doi.org

Thank you to the organisers of @ecbb2026.bsky.social for allowing us to spread the word about our microgrants & mentorship at their brilliant, inclusive conference! #ECBB2026 Our next migrogrant funding round opens this month! Save the date 🗓️

@vernouilleta.bsky.social & Elias Garcia-Pelegrin put together such an interesting and varied symposium on Social Cognition in a Human World #ECBB2026 🌍🐤

How can we improve the study of lizard cognition? @birgitszabo.bsky.social opens with first explaining why we study lizard cognition!

Had such a fun week at @ecbb2026.bsky.social !! Lots of exciting talks and so many lovely and inspiring people. Very grateful to the organisers & to ASAB for my travel grant! 🐤 #ecbb2026

Great few days at #ECBB2026 in Cambridge: great talks, great people, and plenty of ideas to bring home 🧠🐔 And, of course, I kept spreading the chicken agenda: they’re not just farm animals, but fascinating models for understanding behavior and cognition.

#ECBB2026 @vitorhbf.bsky.social closing out Symposium 10: Social cognition in a human world with his talk Humans as social partners? Experience and selection history shape responses in domestic chickens

New paper out! 🎉 Common waxbills (Estrilda astrild) have spread far beyond their native African range, reaching cooler regions - so how do they cope when temperatures drop? doi.org/10.1016/j.cb... @ecobird.bsky.social

We are thrilled to announce that this microgrant funding round we distributed ~£1300 to 7 recipients! 🎉 The next funding round opens September 21st! Learn more about how to donate or apply: opencollective.com/animal-behav...

Our paper is out now! 🎉📝 We describe how we work to address barriers faced by students and early-career researchs in the animal behaviour field, through our mentorships and microgrants. We hope that this can inspire and provide practical resources for others hoping to do the same!

The animal behaviour collective: building confidence and breaking barriers through community

Despite increasing efforts to diversify the field of animal behaviour, systemic barriers continue to limit access and inclusion for researchers from h…

sciencedirect.com

Keeping the Pride Spirit Alive! 🌈 Hope you all celebrated this past month! We’ve gathered some fascinating examples of queer behaviour in nature to share with you.

Very grateful for my amazing jury!!

Alizée Vernouillet@vernouilleta.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Thank you also to the thesis evaluation committee, Prof. Lara Bardi, Prof. Frank Tuyttens, Dr. Lucy Mitchell @lucyjmitchell.bsky.social as internal examiners, and especially to Prof. Tyrone Lucon-Xiccato @tyroneluconxiccato.bsky.social and Dr. Maria Loconsole for acting as external examiners!

A huge congratulations to newly-appointed Dr. Katy Willcox!!! @katywillcox.bsky.social 🍾🎉 For her thesis @ecobird.bsky.social, Katy evaluated the influence of early-life social environments on inhibition, aggression, & social networks in chickens & quails 🐥

Excited to share that last week I successfully defended my PhD thesis 🎉 I am beyond grateful for everyone who has supported me on this journey, I couldn’t have done it alone! #PhDone

Our first round of ABC microgrants for 2026 is done, and for the first time, we were able to fund each and every eligible application! 🎉🎉🎉 We funded a total of 5 applications – this was made possible thanks to our generous donors! 🙏🏽

📣 I am excited to share some new collaborative work published in Biology Letter @royalsocietypublishing.org on spatial learning and lateralisation in lizards 🦎! Check out the full OA paper here: doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... #AnimalCognition #ThinkLikeALizard

Spatial learning and lateralization in lizards

Abstract. Spatial memory is a fundamental cognitive process that allows animals to navigate and interact with their environment effectively. While extensiv

doi.org

In part 2 we apply this framework across three tasks, and test the performance of herring and lesser black-backed gulls in the detour task, the thwarting task (often used with fish) and the stop-change task (developed from the human cognition literature) 🐦 Part 2: rdcu.be/e2pyI 5/6

We explain how this framework applies to the main tasks used to measure response inhibition in the field of animal cognition Part 1: rdcu.be/e2pyN 4/6

🚨Not one, but two papers now out on response inhibition (also called motoric self-regulation or inhibitory control in the field of animal cognition). Many studies find no link between individual performance on different tasks supposedly measuring response inhibition. 1/6