Tessera

Cat Hobaiter

@nakedprimate.bsky.social

Primatologist studying communication and cognition in wild apes. Some time academic. Full time naked ape. PI Wild Minds Lab @ University of St Andrews. She/her. www.wildminds.ac.uk

315 Posts1932 Follower 825 Folgt

Cat Hobaiter @nakedprimate.bsky.social · yesterday

Proud of contributing to this! Light-touch, the STRANGE framework encourages +ive engagement w/ biases in our data, helping us understand where & when results (do/don't) generalise, & spot unrecognised drivers of behavioural variation. 🧪🤓 led by @mikemwebster.bsky.social & awesome co-author team!

Alan McElligott@amcell.bsky.social · 2d ago

2026. Using the STRANGE framework to improve replicability in animal behaviour research and allied fields www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... via @asab.org cc @asabeducation.bsky.social

EvoThan @evothan.bsky.social · 2d ago

📢 A New EvoThan Symposium is coming! Join us Sept. 14–15, 2026 at UCL, London (and online) for EvoThan2026: International Symposium on Comparative Evolutionary Thanatology. Come learn how animals respond to death and dying. Free to attend! Link: evothanatology.wixsite.com/evothan #EvoThan2026

EvoThan2026 Poster depicting a higanbana flower drawing at the center and surrounding animal drawings at the edges (leopard seal, horse, honey bee, dice snake and a gorilla. Topics including: " grief in animals , undertaking in bees, death-feigning in snakes, corpse carrying in primates, animal concepts of death, hominid burials & more". Free attendance. Website: https://evothanatology.wixsite.com/evothan

Mark Thornton @markthornton.bsky.social · 2d ago

Very excited to share this preprint from me, @emmatempleton.bsky.social, @lindseytepfer.bsky.social & @thaliawheatley.bsky.social! "Friends and strangers engage in distinct regimes of body motion synchrony during conversation" osf.io/preprints/ps...

Forms of body motion synchrony. A) Motion quantity synchrony – synchrony in the amount of motion (orange) people engage in over time. This form of synchrony is agnostic to the direction of this movement, may be positive or negative, occurs at varying time lags, and is not specific to matched body parts across members of the dyad. B) Pseudo-synchrony – motion quantity synchrony between people who are not actually interacting. That is, members of different conversations engaging in similar amounts of motion at similar points in the conversation relative to its initiation. And C) directional synchrony – people moving the same body parts in the same direction (or along the same axis in the opposite direction) at the same time (or at some specific time lag).

Mechanisms of synchrony. A) Turn-taking, which causes increases in motion around the time of speaker role exchanges, as participants gesture to hand over or take over the floor. B) Conservation of motion in which one participant moves less when the other moves more, holding the total motion quantity relatively constant over time (note that the total amount of motion across the dyad is similar in the two panels, because one person reduces their motion to balance out the increase in the other’s motion). C) Entrainment, in which mutual following of the same conversational script leads to synchronized movement among people who are not directly interacting (i.e. pseudo-synchrony). Greeting gestures such as the handshakes depicted are one acute manifestation of this entrainment. D) Station-keeping, which maintains proxemic distance and eye level between members of the dyad. This mechanism accounts for directional synchrony, particularly between strangers who feel uncomfortable within each other’s personal space.

Motion quantity synchrony among friends and strangers. A) Friends displayed significant positive synchrony in total motion quantity at short time lags (< 2.5 s) and B) this effect generalized across the majority of body part pairs (each line represents one pair). For example, one series of points might represent the synchrony between the amount of motion in one participant’s left hand and the other’s right foot. C) Strangers displayed significant positive synchrony in total motion quantity at short time lags (< 1 s) and significant negative total motion quantity synchrony at longer time lags (2.5 – 16.6 s). D) Again, this effect generalized to most body part pairs.

Directional synchrony among friends and strangers. A) Among friends, we observed statistically significant directional synchrony in only two body parts (nose and eye) and only in the vertical axis. B) Among strangers, we observed statistically significant directional synchrony in a large number of body parts in the horizontal, vertical, and depth axes.

Science X / Phys.org @sciencex.bsky.social · 5d ago

Sacred ibis feathers and hamadryas baboon fur reflected light almost identical to moonlight, offering a possible link between Thoth’s two animal forms. Olive baboon fur showed a greenish hue instead. doi.org/hccd8h

Moonlight-like fur and feathers may explain Egyptian god Thoth's two animal forms

The ancient Egyptian god of the moon had two very different faces: a crescent-beaked white bird and a silver-coated baboon.

phys.org

Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 5d ago

Amazing resource- do consider a monthly contribution if you can afford it.

Internet Archive@archive.org · 5d ago

🌐 On World Wide Web Day, we’re celebrating the Wayback Machine’s milestone of archiving more than 1 trillion web pages, preserving decades of the web we’ve built. Explore decades of web history with the #WaybackMachine: web.archive.org #Wayback1T #WorldWideWebDay @mark.bsky.social

Jason GRIZZLED Bittel @bittelmethis.bsky.social · 7d ago

Hey 🧪 -- Is anyone out there aware of someone that's picked up Justin O. Schmidt's torch? With regard to insect stings, the sting index, etc? Bonus points if they're using it for something new or have a new twist?

UIS Observatory @uisobservatory.bsky.social · 2w ago

I’d like to make it clear for all the people following me what the sheer gravity of the news is. Without this facility we can’t ensure constant communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. If this facility is off-line, the Artemis program cannot send a crew to the Moon.

Andy Scollick@andyscollick.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex at Robledo de Chavela municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain on fire. Burgohondo wildfire. 📷 via Infues Avila

samuel mehr @mehr.nz · last wk.

cc: scientists who work with protected human data, and especially those ones who are also AI evangelists

Maggie Harrison Dupré@mharrisondupre.bsky.social · last wk.

NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...

Cat Hobaiter @nakedprimate.bsky.social · last wk.

Nothing like walking into the office Monday morning to be faced with the fever dream of last week’s whiteboarding science session 😂🧪🤓 #whiteboardit #invisibilitymath

A black and white box plot labelled ‘plotting the invisible ratio’

Cat Hobaiter @nakedprimate.bsky.social · last wk.

It’s a little nerve-wracking playing in another field’s sandbox, but this was a really fun way to bring some primatology to an ancient Egyptian conundrum.. so if you’re into big baboons, Egyptian dieties, etymological puzzles, &/or spectroscopy of shiny things.. read on! 🧪🏺🐒🌕 tinyurl.com/moonbaboon

Moonlight and the apotheosis of sacred baboons

Thoth was an ancient Egyptian deity of wisdom, writing, magic, and the moon. Manifestations of Thoth took the form of two animal species, the sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus) and sacred baboo...

tinyurl.com

Lynda Boothroyd @drboothroyd.bsky.social · 2w ago

Since I know lots of peeps doing fieldwork in Congo and Uganda - if you haven't had the AZ covid jab, then you can volunteer for an ebola vaccine study!

madeline odent@oldenoughtosay.com · 2w ago

I am not eligible for this study because i got the AstraZeneca covid vaccine, along with probably a significant proportion of Oxford, so if you didn’t get that particular jab and you’re local and willing to help save lives, please follow the link!

Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒@marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 2w ago

Wow, this is fascinating! Research from spectroscopy suggesting that the reason ancient Egyptians venerated hamadryas baboons and sacred ibis is both have hair that resembles the color of moonlight! news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/moon...

Moon Baboon – new insight into the mind of ancient Egyptians | University of St Andrews news

news.st-andrews.ac.uk

Anthropology.net @anthropology.net · 2w ago

Ancient Egypt had zero wild baboons, yet imported and deified one species while ignoring another. New spectroscopy shows why: the sacred baboon’s hair spectrally matches moonlight. #Egyptology #Archaeology www.anthropology.net/p/the-baboon...

The Baboon That Glows Like the Moon

How spectroscopy solved a 3,000-year-old puzzle in Egyptian zoomorphism

anthropology.net

Erin Wessling @northernlimitpt.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thrilled to share that I started last month at @idiv-research.bsky.social as Junior Research Group Leader of the new Behavioural Conservation group. Excited to build the team and explore new scientific frontiers! More here: www.idiv.de/new-junior-g...

New Junior Research Group Leader Erin Wessling | iDiv

idiv.de

Joan Silk @jbsilk.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This project (with Stacy Rosenbaum and Nick Grebe) began in the dark days of Covid, and is finally ready to share. We've built a living database of primate paternity data (52 species, 3000 paternities) and completed first wave of analyses of paternity distribution. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Dartmouth Arts and Sciences @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ancient Egyptians deified the sacred baboon as a form of Thoth, god of the moon. #Dartmouth anthropology professor Nathaniel Dominy and Catherine Hobaiter of @uniofstandrews.bsky.social used spectroscopy to show its grizzled fur is indistinguishable from moonlight.

Kevin Ashton 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇬🇱🇩🇰🇵🇸@kevinashton.bsky.social · 3w ago

Why baboons were a manifestation of the ancient Egyptian deity of wisdom, writing, magic, and the moon. This is an extraordinary work of synthesis, humanism, and science writing. Short, free, non-technical, fascinating, and a great weekend quick read.

Haneul Jang @haneuljang.bsky.social · last mo.

We are accepting expressions of interest or short abstracts (200 words) for both issue 1 and issue 2 until 31 August 💙 For further information or any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at haneul.jang@ird.fr or the editorial team at hgreditor+se@gmail.com

Haneul Jang@haneuljang.bsky.social · 2mo ago

💙 Call for contributions! 💙 To mark 60 years since the Man the Hunter conference (1966), Hunter Gatherer Research is curating a two-part special issue on “Lessons and Reflections from Hunter-Gatherer Research” www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journal/hgr A thread on the two issues & formats👇

Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 3w ago

I've signed and sent a letter - from authors, broadcasters, journalists, artists, scholars and performers - to express our deep concern at @exeter.ac.uk’s troubling plans to make mass redundancies within the Humanities Dept @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social. I would love it if you read and shared widely.

Dear Vice Chancellor, Provost, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean for the Faculty of Humanities,
Arts and Social Sciences and Chair of Council (cc Director of Human Resources and Chief Financial
Officer)
We write, as authors, broadcasters, journalists, artists, publishers, academics and performers in the public
sphere, to express our deep concern at the University of Exeter’s plans to make redundancies within the
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS). The cuts come at a point when Exeter is not in
deficit, and they are not distributed equally across the university. With 114 of the proposed 153 FTE
academic redundancies falling within HASS, the University is dismantling areas of established excellence
and international renown in a Russell Group University whose reputation is known to be outstanding in the
Humanities. Several of the disciplines subject to the proposed cuts, including Classics and Ancient History,
English and Creative Writing, History, and Theology and Religion are among the UK’s strongest according
to league tables, the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF),
and other recognised indicators, including QS World Rankings.
The extent of the proposed cuts is both shocking and misguided. Exeter is seeking to make up to 20
academics redundant in English and Creative Writing, out of a headcount of 62. In Languages and Visual
Culture upwards of 17 colleagues will be made redundant, decimating subjects including Art History and
Visual Culture, French, German, Italian, Hispanic Studies, Russian and Chinese. 5 posts will go or have
gone in Classics and Ancient History (2 academics have already left), out of a staff body of 20. In Theology
and Religion up to 5 academics will be made redundant out of a group of 13. In History over 17 colleagues
will be made redundant, out of a staff body of 53. In the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies staff are
facing a headcount reduction of almost a third (6FTE out …

Liran Samuni @lirsamuni.bsky.social · 4w ago

🐒 Work with primates? Have you observed 3 or more individuals grooming together? Polyadic grooming is barely documented and we know little about its distribution. Please take 1–2 minutes to fill out this short survey and share: forms.gle/cLPB1mnwrjJo...

Polyadic grooming in primates

survey about observations of polyadic grooming in primate species

forms.gle

samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 4w ago

one thing junior researchers should do is review grants, both informally and by accepting reviewer requests every time they come in this is because observing how other scientists confidentially pitch new work to funders is a crash course in developing scientific maturity. it teaches you so much

American Association for the Advancement of Science @aaas.org · 4w ago

AAAS Members are making their voices heard and are speaking out on the significant impacts the OMB proposed rule on federal grantmaking would have on the scientific enterprise. Here is what some members are saying ⤵️

@drphilcox.bsky.social · last mo.

JOB ALERT! We are recruiting at @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social - a lecturer (Grade 8) or associate professor (Grade 9) in primate or human evolutionary anatomy (research and teaching). Contact Susan Evans or myself for further details. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRZ412/l...

Lecturer / Associate Professor in Primate or Human Evolutionary Anatomy at UCL

Searching for an academic job? Explore this Lecturer / Associate Professor in Primate or Human Evolutionary Anatomy opening on jobs.ac.uk! Click to view more details and browse other academic jobs.

jobs.ac.uk

Dieter Lukas @dieterlukas.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · last mo.

I compiled a list of 350 #funding opportunities for #postdoctoral research #fellowships: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J2M_tQgoqV4ivpfEClh9qs9f2KQN2O1G3Jpda2aoHfQ/edit?usp=sharing I realized I should share this again after mentioning it to some folks at the #EFP2026

Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · last mo.

25 years ago, we implicated rare variants of the FOXP2 gene in a severe speech disorder. I’ve spent much time stressing that FOXP2, while interesting, is not the mythical “gene for language”. Weirdly, on occasion I also need to explain why it’s not “proof of aliens”. Full disclosure in this 🧵. 1/n 🧪

Promotional poster for the 2026 science fiction film Disclosure Day.

Barbara Klump @barbaraklump.bsky.social · last mo.

Join us in Vienna! We are looking for a PhD student and a Postdoc to investigate innovation in corvids within the “Comparative ecological innovation styles” project funded by @fwf-at.bsky.social. More info: barbaraklump.com Application deadline July 24th. Please share widely!

A carrion crow holding a walnut. Photo: @valentine-comin.bsky.social

Parlons Terrain @parlonsterrain.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🇬🇧📣 Announcement 📍 Montpellier | June 29 – July 3, 2026 We’ll be attending the @efp2026.bsky.social conference! We’ll contribute to two discussion sessions 👇

FLAVOR FLAV ⏰@flavorflav.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Many of y’all asked how you can support and donate to our female athletes and the celebrations,,, so I created a Go Fund Me. I’m hopeful this can have an impact beyond the weekend and help those that represent the best of the US gofund.me/140322128

Donate to Support She Got Game: Celebrate Female Athletes, organized by Flavor Flav

Flavor Flav, the legendary rapper and Hollywood personality, has long been… Flavor Flav needs your support for Support She Got Game: Celebrate Female Athletes

gofund.me

Cat Hobaiter @nakedprimate.bsky.social · last mo.

Wee traffic jam on the morning commute… #fieldwork #Ennedi #Chad #teamBaboon #notChimpin #science 🧪

New Scientist @newscientist.com · last mo.

Feedback is delighted to explore research digging into the relationship between a reptile's body mass and the length of its Wikipedia entry – but would like to throw Godzilla into the mix

The bigger the lizard, the bigger the Wiki page, discovers ecologist

Feedback is delighted to explore research digging into the relationship between a reptile's body mass and the length of its Wikipedia entry – but would like to throw Godzilla into the mix

newscientist.com

João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · last mo.

Just heard about the 200 redundancies announced by my previous employer, the University of Exeter. 170 of those are in Humanities and Social Sciences. This is what happens in a country with the collapsing HE funding system with VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k salaries+bonuses and corporate governing bodies.