FERAL 1.0 is out! Just to remind you: FERAL is an open-source toolkit for supervised animal behaviour segmentation directly from videos with no pose estimation needed. We made it much easier to install and run FERAL First, to install FERAL: pip install feral www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

FERAL: A Supervised Video-Understanding System for Direct Video-to-Behavior Mapping

Quantifying animal behavior often requires segmenting continuous actions into discrete, interpretable states, yet most automated pipelines infer actions from keypoint dynamics and are limited by keypo...

biorxiv.org

#Animove26 is going to Kenya. Come and join us! Applications are now open until 31st of May 🦁🦏🐘🦛🦇🦂🦗 animove.org/next-animove...

Phil Trans Roy Soc B theme issue ‘The evolution of collective intelligence’ is out! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Volume 381 Issue 1948 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.

royalsocietypublishing.org

Delighted to share this amazing news for the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour @cbehav.bsky.social and @uni-konstanz.de !!! Thanks so much to the Hector Foundation! www.uni-konstanz.de/en/universit...

🦍 Camera-trap footage of chimpanzees & gorillas (PanAf500) We pushed FERAL to handle multi-species, multi-behavior field recordings: day and night, dense vegetation, variable lighting. FERAL achieves strong accuracy even for visually rare but distinct behaviors like climbing up/down.

I think this tool is so powerful and so simple that it will transform behavioral research.

Jacopo Razzauti@jacoporazzauti.bsky.social · 9mo ago

FERAL goes wild: 🦓 Drone footage of Grevy’s zebras (with @blaircostelloe.bsky.social, Ben Koger and @icouzin.bsky.social) Pose-estimation pipelines struggled to detect vigilance behavior from overhead drone videos. FERAL identifies vigilance bouts directly from video.

Collective behaviour researcher @icouzin.bsky.social from #UniKonstanz and @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social was recognized - once again - as “Global Highly Cited Researcher” 2025. The pioneer in collective behaviour research is named among the world’s most influential scientists. t1p.de/7g6kl

Comment by Prof @icouzin.bsky.social that explores how collective intelligence emerges from local interactions in animal groups, and how these principles inform the design of swarm robotic systems. @natureportfolio.nature.com @natcomms.nature.com #robotics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Collective intelligence in animals and robots - Nature Communications

This commentary explores how collective intelligence arises from local interactions in animal groups and how these principles inform the design of swarm robotic systems, addressing the challenge of ac...

nature.com

Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Naturalistic approaches such as Ulanovsky’s open up “potential opportunities to really reveal why the brain is structured in the way it’s structured,” says Iain Couzin. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...

Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky

With an eye toward realism, the neuroscientist, who has a new study about bats out today, creates microcosms of the natural world to understand animal behavior.

thetransmitter.org

New study from #UniKonstanz @cbehav.bsky.social and @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social shows: animal swarms don’t need to follow fixed rules; their coordination emerges from brain dynamics. Flexible “ring attractor” networks create complexity from simplicity: https://t1p.de/4c6cd @icouzin.bsky.social

We had the pleasure of awarding the Fyssen International Prize last June to two outstanding laureates — Prof. Jean-Louis Deneubourg and @icouzin.bsky.social Prof. Iain Couzin — in recognition of the excellence of their work on the theme "Collective behavior across species".

It’s the New Fellows Seminar Day - incredible talks in an inspiring venue. I love the motto of the Royal Society: “Nullius in verba” “Take nobody’s word for it” - don’t just believe something because someone says so—find out for yourself.

Spent a fantastic week in Konstanz visiting @icouzin.bsky.social and having so many discussions about collective behavior in *everything*.

Heuschreckenschwärme sind Wunder der Koordination. Wie sich die einzelnen Tiere im #Schwarm orientieren, können @icouzin.bsky.social et al. vom @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social und @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de) jetzt annähernd erklären: www.laborjournal.de/rubric/journ... (von Larissa Tetsch)

From humans to swarm intelligence, what is the impact of uninformed individuals on collective decisions? Check this comment in @science.org by @kenjennings.bsky.social and @carlbergstrom.com on @icouzin.bsky.social et al's paper cdanfort.w3.uvm.edu/csc-reading-...

I’m thrilled to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. What an honour! Would not have happened without the mentors, postdocs and students who I’ve had the great privilege to learn and collaborate with throughout my career. @uni-konstanz.de @maxplanck.de

The Royal Society@royalsociety.org · last yr.

We are pleased to announce the 90 outstanding researchers from across the world who have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society this year. The group includes trailblazers from AI and electron microscopy to global health and neuroscience. #RSFellows royalsociety.org/news/2025/05...

Liang Li and team have developed a VR system for fish to decipher how they school. The team uncovered the natural ‘control law’ used by zebrafish to coordinate behavior with others. @icouzin.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de @cbehav.bsky.social Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reverse engineering the control law for schooling in zebrafish using virtual reality

Reverse engineering the control law used by schooling fish provides an effective and robust algorithm for robotic pursuit.

science.org

New episode 🎧 We discuss Geometric Decision-Making with @icouzin.bsky.social! We go over the collective behaviours seen in different animals 🐠🪰🐙and ask: how much do physics models ⚛️portray the dynamics of collective-decision-making? Listen to learn more! open.spotify.com/show/4GrM2vL...

In his new book, published today, Nachum Ulanovsky calls on the field to embrace naturalistic conditions and move away from overcontrolled experiments. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

‘Natural Neuroscience,’ an excerpt

In his new book, Nachum Ulanovsky calls on the field to embrace naturalistic conditions and move away from overcontrolled experiments.

thetransmitter.org

Pretty much everything is fucked, but here is some beautiful and exciting science from @archaeon-alex.bsky.social and colleagues. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Tissue-like multicellular development triggered by mechanical compression in archaea

The advent of clonal multicellularity is a critical evolutionary milestone, seen often in eukaryotes, rarely in bacteria, and only once in archaea. We show that uniaxial compression induces clonal mul...

science.org

A special issue of Science explores the complex and close associations rats share with humans—from their ubiquity in the human environment to their crucial role as biomedical models. 🐀 Learn more on #WorldRatDay: scim.ag/3E7Xo04

🌍 We are launching a new #ManyLabs!!! Join the Heat & Cognition project! We're studying how extreme heat affects human thinking, social behavior & well-being — globally. Contribute & co-author: 🔗 Info: heatandmind.wordpress.com 📋 Sign up: www.soscisurvey.de/HeatandCogni... #EnvironmentalPsychology

We use multi-sensor field studies, swarm robotics and computational modelling to understand the 'what', 'how' and hopefully the 'why' of it all. Tagging our collaborators @swarmdynamics.bsky.social @joefresna.bsky.social @icouzin.bsky.social & Kalle Åström at Uni. Lund 3/n

Kicking off the UK Multi-Agent Systems Symposium 2025 (UK-MAS) by The Alan Turing Institute! Opening with @icouzin.bsky.social from @cbehav.bsky.social on "The Geometry of Collective Multi-Agent Decision Making." Exciting day of #collective #behavior across scales. 👾🤖🦠🦈🖥️🏦

We are proud to present our new preprint “Correlative light and electron microscopy reveals the fine circuit structure underlying evidence accumulation in larval zebrafish”, just posted on bioRxiv (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...). (1/10)

Correlative light and electron microscopy reveals the fine circuit structure underlying evidence accumulation in larval zebrafish

Accumulating information is a critical component of most circuit computations in the brain across species, yet its precise implementation at the synaptic level remains poorly understood. Dissecting su...

biorxiv.org

Thank you all for the opportunity to talk about insect swarms, and for the President’s Medal. Lovely to see so many friends from over the years there!

Seirian Sumner@waspwoman.bsky.social · last yr.

There’s really only one place I could be heading tonight.. branded with my #WaspLove broaches @royentsoc.bsky.social #VerrallDinner. Looking forward to hearing the 2025 Verral Lecture given by the one and only @icouzin.bsky.social ! www.royensoc.co.uk/event/verral...

📢 It's tomorrow! The 2025 #VerrallLecture will be given by Professor @icouzin.bsky.social, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social. The Lecture takes place Wed 5 March. The talk will be recorded & shared after the event 🔽 buff.ly/4hJ9BGz