Postdoc Alert! New Postdoc Position for 3 years (max 3 more)- offers the freedom to develop your own research projects in close interaction with my group. Research on invertebrates preferred. Apply by October 31. Please RP. zoologie.uni-greifswald.de/en/organizat... 🧪

DigiFish: A flexible open-source tool for animating realistic virtual fish and reconstructing visual fields from tracking data https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.02.755892v1

How spiders use dragline silk to control abseiling and jumping https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.755426v1

When a fish sees the world move, it immediately swims with it. This is the optomotor response: a visual reflex found across animals that helps us maintain our position and orientation as our surroundings appear to drift. 🐟👀

Generation of a transgenic cephalopod https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.23.753964v1

I'm excited to share our new preprint: Generation of a transgenic cephalopod tinyurl.com/pc86jxz8 Cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus & squid) are crazy critters that dynamically camouflage to their surroundings by changing the color, pattern, & texture of their skin, which they control w their brain.

In our newest issue, we interview Jennifer Mather, whose work involves cephalopod behaviour and human–animal interactions at the University of Lethbridge. Read the Q&A to find out what drew Jennifer to cephalopods and more! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Jennifer Mather

Interview with Jennifer Mather, whose work involves cephalopod behaviour and human–animal interactions at the University of Lethbridge.

cell.com

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

Variability of Head Motion Reveals Development of Spatial Attention https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.23.753739v1

🚨New paper🚨 Garden #spiders are everywhere right now—big, beautiful ladies, still in the hub of their 🕸️ But they are not just waiting, at night they also 💤! We found behavioral signatures of sleep in the wild. Out in #AnimalBehaviour w/ @mherberstein.bsky.social tinyurl.com/uznvv58y 🧵1/5

A joyous fat bear week to all 🐻

We just published the first study showing that a bird-of-prey goes through an ontogenetic window of exploratory play. Young goshawks look like young cheetahs when tossing pine cones into the air, chasing after them. Just published in Animal Behaviour: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/4

We are hiring! Come join us in the Straw Lab at the @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social . Seeking a scientist to work on the neural and computational mechanisms of visual navigation in honey bees. uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00005...

An interesting commentary by Jordanna Sprayberry on our recent @pnas.org paper (pinned on my profile) showing lateralized visuomotor control in hawkmoths 👁️🥤🦋 Cool to discuss additional context of neural circuit structure and ultimate consequences for such control axes www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

An interesting commentary by Jordanna Sprayberry on our recent @pnas.org paper (pinned on my profile) showing lateralized visuomotor control in hawkmoths 👁️🥤🦋 Cool to discuss additional context of neural circuit structure and ultimate consequences for such control axes www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

NEW BRAIN DROPPED

A typical morning at the Anthropic head office

I'd be grateful if you could circulate to good students: I'm recruiting PhD students for Fall '27 in the areas of species interactions and animal behavior. Ad here - jobs.rwfm.tamu.edu/view-job/?id...

Many thanks to @lochlanw.bsky.social and @prelights.bsky.social for highlighting our preprint!

Lochlan W@lochlanw.bsky.social · 3w ago

excited to share my first preLight summarizing such an exciting preprint! from Tjalda Falt et al. @fleyes.bsky.social Vectorial efference copy and visuomotor transformation through gap junctions prelights.biologists.com/highlights/v...

To see, or not to see... 👀 @lochlanw.bsky.social highlights recent work showing that fruit flies selectively suppress visual input via electrical transmission of an efference copy. #neuroscience #preprint @fleyes.bsky.social #preLight ⬇️ prelights.biologists.com/highlights/v...

Vectorial efference copy and visuomotor transformation through gap junctions - preLights

To see, or not to see: fruit flies selectively suppress visual input via electrical transmission of an efference copy

prelights.biologists.com

excited to share my first preLight summarizing such an exciting preprint! from Tjalda Falt et al. @fleyes.bsky.social Vectorial efference copy and visuomotor transformation through gap junctions prelights.biologists.com/highlights/v...

Vectorial efference copy and visuomotor transformation through gap junctions - preLights

To see, or not to see: fruit flies selectively suppress visual input via electrical transmission of an efference copy

prelights.biologists.com

Briefly popping my head back in to unveil the cover of my upcoming book, LIFE BEYOND MEASURE: Nature's Hidden Wonders at Every Scale. It’ll be out on April 6 in the U.S. and April 29 in the U.K. and you can pre-order it right now! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/757705... 1/

🐟🚨 New paper! 🚨🐟 Where do behavioral differences come from? Early life environment clearly matters... ...or not? Early environment affected behavior, but NOT how different individuals became from each other. Those differences were seeded before birth through factors OTHER than genetic variation 🤯

Born This Way: Individuality Is Seeded Before Birth and Robust to Ecological Stress

We reared and recorded behaviours of clonal Amazon mollies in standardized environments, with and without predation stress, from birth through week four of life, to understand how the developmental e...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

We have a fully funded 3-year PhD position to study jumping spider navigation. Open to both domestic and international candidates. Details below. Join us! @animbehav.bsky.social @austentsoc.bsky.social @ausevosoc.bsky.social @neuroethology.org @asab.org

Cheetahs Combine Head Pitch Stabilisation with Predictive Yaw Tracking during High-speed Pursuit https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.03.748592v1

BehaveAI can now measure orientation. So now you can work out the behaviour of your animal in each frame as well as its direction - e.g. tells you which way animals are pointing or whether they're turning. Video guide: youtu.be/FgmtHoardWg Install: github.com/troscianko/B...

BehaveAI - orientation tracking - v1.4

YouTube video by Jolyon Troscianko

youtu.be

Reminder I am hiring a postdoc and PhD student. Thanks to all the applications I already received 🙏 If you know anyone particularly with single cell expertise for the postdoc position, please let me know!

Max Farnworth@maxfarnworth.bsky.social · last mo.

🚨 I AM HIRING a 3-year postdoc & 4-year PhD student 🚨 [PLEASE SHARE WIDELY] My Emmy Noether @dfg.de funded Neural Circuit & Systems Evolution lab (🌟) at the @unimainz.bsky.socialÍ wants to start existing. So..., what do we need? WELL... we need you! APPLY UNTIL 21 SEPTEMBER.

Great work on the effects of desert locust coloration on swarming!! Thanks @sercansayin.bsky.social for including me and @jjfosterlab.bsky.social in this exciting study!!

Sercan Sayin@sercansayin.bsky.social · last mo.

Swarm models are abstract, but life is full of color! Locust warning coloration modulates how individuals track others, especially in cluttered environments. Visual modeling, VR, remote sensing. With @jjfosterlab.bsky.social, @theswordlab.bsky.social, @icouzin.bsky.social ssrn.com/abstract=739...

There seemed to be a lot of public panic (at least on X) over the recent simulation of a fruit fly being controlled by the virtual connectome - this was by far the funniest response

Fish with electrical senses have unique brain cells specifically to process that information. The real trick they pull is separating the electricity they emit from the ones they sense. 🧪 Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10690-6​