Rachel Kendal
@rachkendal.bsky.social
Interested in cultural evolution, evolutionary anthropology, psychology, primatology, equitable academia, cats, dogs, wild swimming and camping. Prof at Durham Uni, UK (she/her)
What is the role of social learning in adopting novel food? Study of urban #cockatoos by @julia-penndorf.bsky.social @clevercockierp.bsky.social &co shows that they rapidly adopt novel food via #SocialLearning, with juveniles showing conformist preferences @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4uq6NVq
Are gender gaps in partner preferences larger in countries with stronger gender norms? In our new preprint (w/ @jinwenxie.bsky.social ), we addressed this question using an open access dataset (Walter et al, 2020; >14k participants, 45 countries). 🧵1/4 #ehbea #psychscisky 🧪 osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
Last day to register for EHBEA is tomorrow (1 April). The programme is now published and looks great! Really good to see so many papers focused on advancing methods and theory in the discipline 😊
EHBEA 2026@ehbea2026.bsky.social · 4mo ago⏳ Blink, and you’ll miss it… Registration for #EHBEA2026 closes tomorrow (1 April) 🗓️ Your final chance to be part of four days of ideas, debate & discovery in Leiden 🇳🇱🧠🌷 Be there—or hear about it later 😉 👉 www.ehbea2026.com
It took 3 years to complete this paper and it was difficult(!) but I think both @ctennie.bsky.social and I are grateful for the varied perspectives we gained as a result of this collaboration. If you work on ape culture, hopefully you'll feel the same doi.org/10.1017/ehs.... [Opens in a new window]
Brokering peace in the ape (culture) wars | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core
Brokering peace in the ape (culture) wars - Volume 8
doi.org
Really enjoyed speaking at this great initiative in Sheffield’s School of Biosciences sheffield.ac.uk/biosciences/.... Many thanks for nominating me @jennifer-morinay.bsky.social and great hosting Kimberley Simpson @durhamanthropology.bsky.social
The Annual Margaret Savigear Lectures
The Margaret Savigear Lectures acknowledge the importance of role models to the next generation of scientists by explicitly increasing the visibility of women biologists and celebrates the importance ...
sheffield.ac.uk
Did you know that the spinning top is one of the most common forms of traditional play worldwide? Our research found tops to be nearly universal across human cultures. Wherever you come from, your ancestors probably spun tops. New preprint: Top of the World osf.io/preprints/so... Thread:
"Animal cultures matter first and foremost because they matter to the animals themselves." If you enjoyed our recent episode on the value of animal cultures, you may be interested in this new paper by @simonfitzpatrick.bsky.social & @kristinandrews.bsky.social! link.springer.com/article/10.3...
Animal cultures matter for conservation, but also to animals - Learning & Behavior
A growing acceptance that many nonhuman animal communities have distinct cultures – group-variable patterns of behavior and information sustained over time by social learning – is beginning to reshape...
link.springer.com
The Culture Conference 2026 is already starting next week! 🥳 If you plan to attend in-person, please register ‼️before Sunday 22/02‼️ We are almost full, so don’t wait 😊 Online registration will remain open 💻 See you next week in Utrecht 🌇 To register:👇 culture-conference.com/registration/
Registration
Registrations for the conference and the pre-conference workshop are now OPEN! Register for the conference (26-27/02): Culture Conference 2026 – Registration form Register for the worksh…
culture-conference.com
📢 New Paper 🚨 Hadza food-sharing is egalitarian, yet offers in giving games have never matched the equitable redistribution seen in real life. In this study, we allowed people to give *or* take. Lifelike equitable distributions only appeared when people took from peers in surplus. bit.ly/4kvLOwA
The “I” in egalitarianism: Hadza hunter-gatherers averse to inequality primarily when personally unfavorable
Abstract. Many economists contend that humans have strong, universal, other-regarding equality preferences with deep evolutionary roots. Indeed, many hunte
academic.oup.com
🚨New Paper on Bonobo and Chimpanzee tool flexibility. As so often performance is leveraged by the captivity effect yet the two species differ in explorative behavior and how readily they switch between tool types. For more 👇🏼 royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article... @rachelaharrison.bsky.social
If you run application processes for any kind of opportunities please check out our toolkit for enhancing EDI and do let us know of any improvements needed
Durham University Anthropology@durhamanthropology.bsky.social · 6mo agoLast week we saw the launch of the new 'EDI in application processes' toolkit! editoolkit.webspace.durham.ac.uk (more info in thread 👇)
Our new review of beluga sociality and culture just dropped at Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! Some of our key conclusions summarized 🧵 doi.org/10.1007/s002... @marine-valeria.bsky.social @dmennill.bsky.social @raincoast.org
"The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution" with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social out in Proc B royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution
Abstract. The societal effects of children’s learning in cultural evolution have been underexplored. Here, we investigate using agent-based models how a pr
royalsocietypublishing.org
🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
STbayes: An R package for creating, fitting and understanding Bayesian models of social transmission
A critical consequence of joining social groups is the possibility of social transmission of information related to novel behaviours or resources. Network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) has emerg...
doi.org
In this blog post, Guest Editor @rachkendal.bsky.social discusses their #PhilTransB issue, 'Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures': royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12...
1/ In a recent @britishacademy.bsky.social video @rebeccasear.bsky.social from @brunelpsy.bsky.social takes a clear-eyed look at the 21st‑century rise of eugenics - an ideology that should have been left behind, yet is now re‑emerging in a number of troubling ways ⚠️🧬 🧪 Watch the full talk here 🎥👇
The 21st Century Resurgence of Eugenics
YouTube video by The British Academy
youtube.com
Academics talk a lot about sustainability, but not always in ways practitioners can use. We spent 3 days with NGOs, businesses & community organizers to understand what actually works. New paper in Phil Trans B: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article... #AcademicSky #ScienceCommunication 🧪
A transdisciplinary approach to growing an applied science of cultural evolution for a sustainable future
Abstract. Addressing sustainability challenges requires an integrative approach that bridges scientific research with practical application. The field of c
royalsocietypublishing.org
Gentle reminder that John Odling-Smee, who is now in his 90s (!) published his big update on #NicheConstruction last year. It's open access and can be downloaded here: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon... ( #pleasecite )
Niche Construction: How Life Contributes to Its Own Evolution
How niche construction theory extends evolutionary theory beyond natural selection to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their e
direct.mit.edu
New in Proceedings B, led by Jaspreet Singh: "Comparing expert assessments of research quality between the Global North and East Africa" royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article... We found that Kenyan assessors were more optimistic about the quality of 80 papers than were Global North assessors 1/
Excited to get this paper published! 🌟 We argue that men exaggerate patriarchal beliefs in an effort to signal conformity to others, which in turn fuels misperceptions about peers - making patriarchal norms resistant to change. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
The social performance of gender roles: men report lower support for women’s empowerment when in front of their peers
Abstract. Beliefs about gender roles are widely understood to be acquired via social learning. However, accounts of gender socialization remain disconnecte
royalsocietypublishing.org
David W Lawson@davidwlawson.bsky.social · 2y ago⭐️Preprint: We combine a field experiment with focus groups to study the social learning of gender roles in Tanzania. Men express greater support for patriarchal beliefs when in peer groups implying the 'performance' of masculine ideals even when at odds with personal beliefs. osf.io/preprints/ps...
Today sees the publication of the Theme Issue featuring the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3... @durhamdcerc.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
I am pleased to announce that from Jan 1 2026 I take over as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biological Theory. My first act, with the support of the editorial team, is to bring the journal to BlueSky from X. Please follow us @biologicaltheory.bsky.social. We will be posting about all our articles.
Why do people endorse seemingly extraordinary beliefs such as in pseudoscience & supernatural entities? Leading approaches stress cognitive biases (like agency detection) & social dynamics (like signaling). Eli Stark-Elster & I argue that experience matters too & put fwd a framework explaining how.
Eli Stark-Elster@eselster.bsky.social · 8mo agoIn a new Review for @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social -- and my first first-authored paper! -- @manvir.bsky.social and I argue that experience shapes the emergence and evolution of seemingly extraordinary beliefs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
⏰ Reminder: 10 days left to submit your abstract for Culture Conference 2026! 🧠 Workshop details are now live! Join us for a hands-on day on cutting-edge tools for analysing social networks & social transmission (registration opens soon). Find all details here: culture-conference.com/workshop/
Thanks @patrickesavage.bsky.social great to see the door stop being used in great teaching @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @durhamdcerc.bsky.social
Pat Savage@patrickesavage.bsky.social · 10mo agoThis thicc 71-chapter book (academic.oup.com/edited-volum...) arrived just in time to use as the textbook for my new "Cultural Evolution" class I've just started teaching! Featuring this chapter from @cailinmeister.bsky.social @psmaldino.bsky.social & Jingyi Wu as well as much more including...
This graph never fails to be shocking: "The US has experienced the earliest and greatest slowdown in life expectancy improvements among higher-income countries, reported Eileen Crimmins. “We have horrible life expectancy—and it’s getting worse and worse”" www.prb.org/resources/se...
First paper out in FACE-UP project on protecting children from urban air pollution www.growkudos.com/articles/10.... with Judith Covey and @clairehorwell.bsky.social. @durhamanthropology.bsky.social
Children’s preferences for features and designs of KN95-style respirators: A comparative study between Indonesia and Nepal
This study explores children’s preferences for different designs of KN95-style respirators in two highly polluted cities: Kathmandu, Nepal and Bandung, Indonesia. It aims to understand which designs a...
growkudos.com
Standing up for science is one way to push back against political attacks on the university sector 👇 Experts in biology and anthropology have put together this statement to counter misinformation about race. Please consider signing and sharing
Stacy Farina@stacyfarina.bsky.social · 11mo agoTrump's very first example of the Smithsonian's "corrosive ideology" was an exhibit that correctly stated "Race is a human invention." How is scientific consensus (that biological races don't exist in humans) corrosive? We are asking scientists to co-sign our statement: forms.gle/kqKQF9CZ3jPB...
