Join us in Münster this autumn!

DZG section Behavioural Biology@dzg-behaviour.bsky.social · 4mo ago

📢 Mark your calendars for the Joint Graduate Meeting 2026, sponsored by @ethoges.bsky.social and the German Zoological Society (DZG)! Don't miss this fantastic opportunity to showcase your research & network with peers! 📆 30.09. - 02.10.2026 🌍 @uni-muenster.de Abstract submission will open soon.

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals

Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.

rollingstone.com

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing. Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs

The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...

science.org

Do tou wanna share an office with me and work in an amazing team on farm animal emotions? Here you go! There's usually always chocolate and snacks in my office. Just sayin 😋

Dr Maria Vilain Rørvang@drmariarorvang.bsky.social · 10mo ago

📣 Are you interested in applied animal ethology and perceptual abilities of animals? Do you want to help us disentangle how animal emotions are modulated by their sensory environment? Then, you might be the postdoc we are looking for🌠 More info: www.slu.se/en/about-slu... #appliedethology #postcoc

Today is big day, it's a happy and sad day. I am moving from Finland to Sweden. I spent 7 years in Turku, this is the longest I have ever spent in one place. I'll cherish the memories and friendship I've built here forever. Thank you Turku, hello Lomma.

She was an inspiration to many of us, and she will continue to be. Thank you for all of work ❤️

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 10mo ago

The naturalist Jane Goodall died today at 91. Hope, she argued, is not merely “passive wishful thinking” but a “crucial survival trait.” Revisit a conversation with Goodall, from 2021: nyer.cm/F55JtsS

doi.org/10.1080/0892... New paper out! Validation of the human-horse attachment styles survey. Glad to be co last author on this piece with @millasalonen.bsky.social. Congrats to our respective students Alisa and Aada for the amazing work they put in this study.

Psychometric Validation of the Adapted Pet Attachment Questionnaire in Measuring Human–Horse Attachment

Attachment between humans and conventional pets like dogs and cats has been previously characterized by two dimensions: attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. This study used attachment theory a...

doi.org

To study emotions in free-ranging #animals, researchers rely on what they see: but inferring #emotions from #behavior is not enough! Our new preprint discusses how #technology could help us better understand animal affect under naturalistic conditions: osf.io/preprints/os...

I reviewed a paper for BMC Veterinary Research. Clear missunderstanding of animal cognition, inappropriate methodology, anthropocentric issues... 5 reviewers, 4 rejections. Still the decision is " Revise". So much waist of my time and energy. Do not submit in this journal. @springernature.com

Data collection is underway! We're using mobile eye tracking to study action comprehension in dogs. Django is helping us understand how dogs see and interpret our actions — more coming soon! 🐶👁️ #Science #DogResearch #CognitiveScience Thanks @asab.org for funding this project!

Behind many scientists is a lifetime of invisible, unsustainable costs. From unpaid internships to underpaid postdocs, the economic toll of a STEM career is staggering—and it's pushing talent out. My new perspective explores this crisis. #STEM #AcademicBlueSky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

How many PhDs does the world need? Doctoral graduates vastly outnumber jobs in academia. PhD programmes need to better prepare students for careers outside universities, researchers warn. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How many PhDs does the world need? Doctoral graduates vastly outnumber jobs in academia

PhD programmes need to better prepare students for careers outside universities, researchers warn.

nature.com

Sometimes research is spending 20 min at the store to look for the optimal bowl size for the kitty experiment of the amazing student Veera Riihonen i am cosupervising with @millasalonen.bsky.social

Are you looking for more scientists to follow? Of course you are. Then how about a thread with 50 amazing scientists and/or science writers, along with reasons why you should follow them? (No particular order) Unfortunately, I forgot to put any dudes on the list again. Silly me.

We wrap up the second day of #AffectEvo-Lisbon25 meetup with some more great discussions. #AffectEvo

Fascinating discussions this morning. My brain is fusing with ideas. It is really stimulating to exchange with experts from many fields and that have different approaches to the concept of affective state.

AFFECT-EVO@affect-evo.bsky.social · last yr.

Day 2 of our first meeting in Lisbon. This morning we divided into 3 groups to discuss the definitions of Valence and Fear as an exercise to help us think on the optimal ways to map affective states of animals. #AffectEvo #AffectEvo_Lisbon25

Next up, we had Mike Mendl (Bristol, UK) giving us a brief tour of some emotion concepts and theories and their translatable characteristics. #AffectEvo #AffectEvo-Lisbon25

And the last keynote of the day was a tour de force by David Anderson (Caltech, USA) on neural dynamics and the encoding of emotion primitives.

Carrie Figdor (Iowa, USA) delivers the first keynote: “From Affect and Emotion Theories to a Phylogeny of Affect and Emotion”

Very excited to be in person for the first meeting of @affect-evo.bsky.social ! The program is sick and will be the place for fascinating discussion to refine our vision of animal affective state and its evolution across species.

The advantage of having an #astronomy nerd for housemate, you get front raw for partial #solareclipse viewing 😁!

Academia is such a trap... Unemployment doesn't count as a career break. So now I give lectures, I supervise 2 PhDs and 1 MSc, I go to conferences and consortiums, work on my papers while applying for grants, all of that for free! Not sure how long I can keep going. #academia #postdoclife #burnout

a penguin is crying while holding a pile of paperwork

Alt: a penguin is crying while holding a pile of paperwork

media.tenor.com

@melissa-gagniere.bsky.social presented her PhD work at the Aura symposium. She works on 🦊🦡🦝 behavior following an urban gradient in Finland. Follow her for more update to come or even to participate in her study!

🚨I promised I'd say more on the Royal Society and Elon Musk, so here it is. 🚨 I've resigned my position as Associate Editor at Royal Society's journal Open Science in protest at their lack of action over Elon Musk. My op-ed in @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Elon Musk is a proven danger to good science, but the Royal Society won’t say so. That’s why I resigned | Kit Yates

It is vital to act, and I urge colleagues to do so. How can we stand by and laud this man while he undermines scientific integrity? asks academic and author Kit Yates

theguardian.com

Hi women of Science! Anyone who ever started initiatives to support peer women in your department? Safe peer group or so to get input regarding everyday life sexism and how to address it. We want to initiate something, but IDK where to start #womeninscience #womeninsresearch #sexism #academia

Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... In our new paper we review 130 papers and summarise empirical evidence for socioecological factors affecting vocal communication, as well as evidence for vocal learning in different corvid species.

Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review

Vocal communication is broadly distributed in a wide range of nonhuman animal species and is hypothesized to play an important role in mate attraction…

sciencedirect.com

Expanding perspectives and understanding relational potential: Are mutually beneficial human-animal relationships compatible with current animal agricultural practices? www.cambridge.org/core/journal...