Fieldwork dreams: attending @uop-ccep.bsky.social journal club (a super interesting talk by Titir Debnath on #macaques and #human–wildlife #conflict in the Indian Himalayas)… and some grey friends also wanted to listen!! 🐒🏔️🐘

🐶 As Section President for this year’s British Science Festival, I’m honoured to represent the amazing work we do at UoP Dog Cognition Centre, uncovering incredible cognitive abilities of dogs! #DogCognition #AnimalCognition #BritishScienceFestival www.britishscienceassociation.org/news/announc...

Announcing our British Science Festival 2026 Section Presidents

The British Science Association has announced the Scientific Section Presidents for the 2026 British Science Festival, which takes place from 16-20 September in Southampton, hosted by the University o...

britishscienceassociation.org

Grateful to have won a second Jana Robeyst Trust Fund #Grant to help support my research assistant hire 🩵 shoutout to Thatayaone (TT) and his incredible knowledge; from helping me find elephants, to filming them - and for being a calm presence when they come a little too close!! 🤣🐘🎥

✨ Meet the CCEP team!! ✨ Alexia is a first-year PhD student exploring multimodal communicative signals across contrasting emotional contexts in crested macaques 🙊🙈 She hopes to develop an objective and quantitative framework for assessing affective valence in wild animals! 📸: stock images 🌿🧠

We've extended this study to see how many responses we can get in one week! 👉 tinyurl.com/55vjsbxr Don't miss out on fun #science participation right at your fingertips. Help us understand how we perceive and interpret #elephant behaviour 🐘 💻 🌍 Study link: tinyurl.com/55vjsbxr

🚨📣 More spaces available!!! Take part & contribute to research by viewing images or videos of #elephants! Share & spread the word to help us reach more people who live or work with elephants 🐘🌍👉 Link: tinyurl.com/55vjsbxr @uop-ccep.bsky.social @nakedprimate.bsky.social @leanneproops.bsky.social

🚨📣 Calling everyone who lives or works with #elephants !! 📣🚨 help us to share, spread the word and find those to complete a short study on #elephant #posture for some fab research by @tapintothewild.bsky.social 🩵 how many responses can we get in a week? 🐘🌍🧠 Link: tinyurl.com/55vjsbxr

✨ Meet the team!✨ @sasha-touille.bsky.social is a PhD student focusing on #multimodal #communication in donkeys and horses 🧠 One of her main goals is to build an ethogram and study how donkeys and horses communicate; exploring whether differences in their social dynamics influence communication! 🐴🫏

Back in Brussels for the 2026 edition of the Science is Wonderful event organised by the #MSCA. Very grateful for being selected and invited again by the European Commission to explain our research and inspire children 🐵 🌴 @jmicheletta.bsky.social @teresa-romero.bsky.social @francescadp.bsky.social

Marine Joly@marinemjoly.bsky.social · last yr.

We had a fantastic time showcasing our research at the Science is Wonderful! fair organised by the European Commission in Brussels. Thanks to #MSCA for the invitation and to all children who visited our booth 😃 🐒 @francescadp.bsky.social @jmicheletta.bsky.social @teresa-romero.bsky.social

It was our #CCEPScienceDay yesterday!! We put on a fab day of presentations, poster sessions and activities to talk to students about our staff and student projects 📚🌍👩🏻‍🔬 and showcase the range of research happening across our centre!! 🐴🐶🐘🙊🦧

✨Meet the team!!✨ @tapintothewild.bsky.social is a PhD student analysing #elephant #postures expressed across different contexts in elephant-elephant and elephant-human interactions. The aim is to aid human-elephant coexistence and animal welfare by understanding the nuances of elephant behaviour 🧠🐘

We had a fab journal club today featuring the work of Jennifer Linden - a PhD student from @zslofficial.bsky.social / @ox.ac.uk - talking to us all about her research on African #wilddog conservation and climate change! 🌍🐶🐆

✨Meet the team!✨ @vascom.bsky.social is a PhD student exploring the intersection of behaviour, plastic pollution, and human perspectives. His research examines moor macaque interactions with #plastic, human perceptions of wildlife–waste interactions, and arts-based approaches to raise awareness 🐒♻️🗑️

Check out this fascinating article about elephant knowledge, featuring our very own Dr. Lucy Bates 🧠🐘🌍

How elephants pass on crucial survival skills to next generations

Scientists are finding elephant youths respond differently to danger if they grew up without elders.

nationalgeographic.com

We are recruiting a Lecturer in Psychology: mss.port.ac.uk/ce0732li_web... and a Teaching Fellow: mss.port.ac.uk/ce0732li_web.... Come and join the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology 🐶🐵🐴🐘🕷️🧒 www.port.ac.uk/research/res...

✨Meet the CCEP team!✨ @sophiemilward.bsky.social specialises in #SocialCognition, studying the drivers of human coordination with others. She studies child / adult behaviour across diverse cultures to identify how our social coordination abilities develop and are influenced by our surroundings 👥🌍🧠

I wrote a thing…. eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Some dogs can pick up hundreds of words – do they learn like children?

Some dogs can remember the names of hundreds of objects.

eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com

Webinar: Donkeys as Agents of Drought Resilience for Pastoralist Communities 5th February at 11am GMT/2pm EAT port-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89107947069 We are pleased to invite you to our webinar and panel discussion sharing the findings from our British Academy-funded project. Hope to see you there!

Sharing the first results from one of my PhD studies at the SCDTP final year conference felt like a real milestone 💫🐴 #SCDTPFYC2526

Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology@uop-ccep.bsky.social · 8mo ago

It was a fab day at the SCDTP @scdtp.bsky.social Final Year Conference yesterday! CCEP students presented their fab PhD research showcasing their projects in equid communication and elephant behaviour; in person and from the field! Congrats to Tapinder and @sasha-touille.bsky.social 🐘🐴 #SCDTPFYC2526

It was a fab day at the SCDTP @scdtp.bsky.social Final Year Conference yesterday! CCEP students presented their fab PhD research showcasing their projects in equid communication and elephant behaviour; in person and from the field! Congrats to Tapinder and @sasha-touille.bsky.social 🐘🐴 #SCDTPFYC2526

New podcast episode featuring our research @uop-ccep.bsky.social 🐒 @estherherrmann.bsky.social and I talk about some of our findings on chimpanzee and macaque cognition and why protecting these species matters. Listen here: shows.acast.com/399a0c03-e9d... #primates #evolution #psychology

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

🐘 New Paper on Elephant Gestures Featured in The New York Times 📰 NYT article: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/s... The study is part of Vesta Eleuteri’s PhD research, supervised by me and Catherine Hobaiter, in collaboration with Josh Plotnik and Lucy Bates.

How Elephants Say They Like Them Apples

nytimes.com

Excellent talks, nice chats, great city! #CSF2025 #Hamburg

Check out my article in The Conversation, all about our latest paper, which created an extensive catalogue of horse facial expressions 🐴 Thank you so much for inviting me to contribute! #TheConversation #equineresearch #facialexpressions theconversation.com/horses-have-...

Horses have a complex repertoire of facial expressions, just like primates

The study has created a catalogue of horse facial expressions to help people understand how to read these incredible animals.

theconversation.com

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 We have created the first anatomically based ethogram of horse facial behaviour, covering a broad range of distinct behaviours from aggression through to play 🐴 Check it out here: peerj.com/articles/193... @leanneproops.bsky.social @uop-ccep.bsky.social

New paper just dropped🎉 With novel "Curiosity Boxes", we find that chimps & children are very curious about social interactions, & some even give up a reward to gain info! Fun collaboration with @alisongopnik.bsky.social, @janengelmann.bsky.social & others royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Chimpanzees and children are curious about social interactions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Curiosity is adaptive, enhances learning, and reduces uncertainty. Social curiosity is defined as the motivation to gain information about the actions, relationships, and psychology of others. Little ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

📢 The MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship call is now open! Join our international expert team to explore minds across species. We study: 🐒 Primates 🐕 Dogs 🐘 Elephants 🐴 Donkeys and horses 🔗 contact one of us to discuss your application: marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/post... #MSCA

Postdoctoral Fellowships call: 6 steps to prepare your application

These tips and tricks will help you find the best host organisation and prepare a successful proposal.

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu

Very grateful for my Jana Robyest Trust Fund grant and Portsmouth Psychology grant for getting me on a plane to Botswana - and to the Elephants for Africa research camp! 🐘🩶 Here to scope out the national park for my PhD field season next year; what a beautiful place 🌍🇧🇼 #SCDTP @scdtp.bsky.social

Today at 1pm UK time the GMP will be featured in the Journal Club of the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology from the University of Portsmouth!