Zoë Goldsborough

Want to know more about monkeys kidnapping other monkeys?🐒 I had an amazing chat together with @bjjbarrett.bsky.social on @sidedoorpod.bsky.social about the Coiban capuchins and their wild antics. Science really is stranger than fiction! Listen 👂 here: www.si.edu/sidedoor/mon...

A causal framework for the drivers of animal social network structure Author summary Behavioural ecologists ask mechanistic questions about behaviour—causal questions. When studying animal societies, these questions often concern the drivers of social network structure....

Are you studying animal sociality?

My (now published) first PhD chapter proposes a Bayesian + causal framework to infer the factors shaping the social relationships that animals form with one another.

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Golden eagle on the nest in Finland (by O. Karlin)

🦅PhD position 🦅 in my new group at @fbm-unil.bsky.social in Switzerland, studying how the social and resource landscapes shape the learning process for soaring flight. Deadline: Oct 30. Pls repost! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

I am humbled to have received much praise for THE ARROGANT APE (Avery / Penguin Random House) out September 2.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717436/the-arrogant-ape-by-christine-webb

WeTransfer just changed their TOS giving themselves permission to train AI on any content you transfer and produce derivative works based on content you transfer that they are allowed to monetize and you are not allowed payment for.

Stop using WeTransfer.

❓Why do the Nordics & Dutch speak English so much better than the Germans, Italians & French?

➡️ New Working Paper:

Out-of-School Learning: Subtitling vs. Dubbing and the Acquisition of Foreign-Language Skills
w/ F. Baumeister & E. Hanushek

www.nber.org/papers/w33984

A 🧵 1/12

~5 years, 5 chapters, and one real human baby later, my "academic" baby is finally done. After a defense in near-boiling conditions, where even the beamer quit halfway through, I am now officially Dr. Zoë 🎓🐒 I am so grateful for this experience, and all my friends and family lifting me up! #PhDone

been a long time coming, there's now a preprint along with Will Hoppitt describing our new R package for creating, fitting and interpreting bayesian NBDA models (STBayes). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Documentation is here michaelchimento.github.io/STbayes/inde...

Rise and spread of a social tradition of interspecies abduction Goldsborough and colleagues report the origin and spread of a cultural tradition of interspecies abduction of infant howler monkeys by male white-faced capuchin monkeys in the wild.

In a recent correspondence, @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social and colleagues report the origin and spread of a cultural tradition of interspecies abduction of infant howler monkeys by male white-faced capuchin monkeys in the wild. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Kidnapping im Tierreich: "Man hört die Brüllaffen nach ihren entführten Babys schreien" Auf einer unbewohnten Insel vor Panama entdeckt die Doktorandin Zoë Goldsborough Unglaubliches: Kapuzineraffen kidnappen Jungtiere anderer Affen. Bleibt die Frage, warum.

🐒🚨„Affen kidnappen Babys anderer Affenart“. Habt ihr diese unglaubliche News gelesen - von #Kapuzineräffchen und #Brüllaffen in #Panama? Bio-Doktorandin @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social hat‘s entdeckt. Mir hat sie erzählt, was hinter dem traurigen Kidnapping steckt: www.zeit.de/wissen/umwel... @zeit.de

This Was Odd: These Monkeys Kidnapped Babies From Another Species.

Monkeys kidnap the babies of other monkeys, and then wear them around for days on end... it's a grim tale I've written for the @nytimes.com!

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/s...

Some sketches for this surprising publication by ‪ @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @bjjbarrett.bsky.social @meg-crofoot.bsky.social @livingingroups.bsky.social
Capuchin monkeys abducting howler monkey infants and carrying them around! 😐

Rise and spread of a social tradition of interspecies abduction Goldsborough and colleagues report the origin and spread of a cultural tradition of interspecies abduction of infant howler monkeys by male white-faced capuchin monkeys in the wild.

🧪🏺 Capuchins kidnapping howler infants: fascinated by many aspects of this- rapidity of 'fashion' spread, individual variation but also sex bias, and relevance in helping us imagine multiplicity of inter-species hominin interactions, inc. #Neanderthals & early H. sapiens
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Thank you!

Thank you!!

This Was Odd: These Monkeys Kidnapped Babies From Another Species.

The capuchins on Jicaron are intriguing everyone, from scientists to the general public 🙈 Stories from our latest paper by @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social @bjjbarrett.bsky.social and team!

Paper: www.cell.com/current-biol...

🧵

@lizlandau.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/s...

YouTube video by Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior Capuchin monkeys are abducting baby howlers. But why?

#Capuchins are abducting baby howlers. But why?
Zoë Goldsborough, Brendan Barrett, and Meg Crofoot
@mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social discuss what’s behind this novel animal tradition. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mooQ... @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social

Thank you, Sofia! :)

Researchers puzzle over rash of baby monkey kidnappings Young, male capuchin monkeys have started kidnapping the babies of nearby howler monkeys. Why? Maybe boredom.

Young, male capuchin monkeys have started kidnapping the babies of nearby howler monkeys. Why? Maybe boredom.

Very different mammals follow the same rules of behavior Research hints at an underlying architecture that orders the movements of animals

Cross-species teamwork from @livingingroups.bsky.social reveals unexpected similarities in three social mammals 🤔

By lead author @pminasandra.bsky.social with Emily Grout, Katrina Brock, Meg Crofoot, Vlad Demartsev, Amlan Nayak, Eli
Strauss, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin🧵1/2

www.ab.mpg.de/679000/news_...

Capuchin monkeys kidnap baby howler monkeys, shocking scientists The disturbing fad could be the result of boredom.

Therapist: The kidnapping capuchin monkeys aren't real and can't hurt you.

Nature:

www.popsci.com/environment/...

Scientists studying footage from Jicarón Island spotted something unusual: a capuchin monkey carrying an infant howler on his back. Now, they’re trying to learn what it means. cnn.it/3H1dtWA

These capuchins are abducting babies from howler monkeys—for fun? A young male nicknamed Joker was probably the first to start carrying a howler monkey baby on his back for days on end. Then a group of other young males started to copy him.

Capuchins surprising us again, this time rather unpleasantly... featuring @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social and @bjjbarrett.bsky.social! www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Hot off the press 📣: one of the most surprising and unsettling findings of my PhD. A novel social tradition emerged in the tool-using white-faced capuchins of Jicarón island… abducting and carrying the infants of another species. Thread with gifs, videos, and all the bizarre details 👇

🚨 Out this week in @pnas.org 🚨
The flagship paper from my PhD @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @livingingroups.bsky.social - We show surprising statistical similarities in animal behaviour across states, individuals, and even species.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
(🧵 1/10)

Development and social dynamics of stone tool use in white-faced capuchin monkeys Percussive tool use for extractive foraging allows animals to access otherwise inaccessible resources and forage more efficiently, with potentially important implications for their fitness. The development of tool use proficiency has been well-documented in nut-cracking chimpanzees and robust capuchins, and in shellfish-cracking long-tailed macaques, where mothers and proficient tool users are the most important models. However, little is known about how tool use develops in populations where opportunities for social learning are scarce. White-faced capuchins ( Cebus capucinus imitator ) on Jicarón Island, Panama, provide a unique case to consider this question: stone tool use is entirely male-biased, meaning juveniles cannot learn from their mothers, and reduced group cohesion further limits social learning opportunities. Here, we investigate the acquisition and development of stone tool proficiency in this population using a year-long dataset from camera traps placed at two experimental anvils. We assess differences in proficiency between age classes, examine the development of tool use proficiency over time, and explore patterns of social attention during tool use. We show that juvenile capuchins are less proficient than subadults and adults, but their proficiency remains stable over the course of one year, suggesting that skill development may require prolonged practice or physical maturation. In contrast to other primates, social learning opportunities on Jicarón appear limited and scrounging is rare, yet we do find robust patterns in social attention when it occurs. Social attention to tool use mostly comes from juveniles too young to use tools themselves, who observe proficient subadults that tolerate scrounging. Our results contribute to the understanding of how complex tool use behaviors are acquired and maintained in primates, highlighting the role of social tolerance in the development of proficiency. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

A white paper in progress, and one of @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social submitted dissertation chapters: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...:

Preprint @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social arising from @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social animal welfare workshops. How can we develop a better error culture in animal biologging where we can learn from our, and others, mistakes and experiences?

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

New paper alert!

Bonobos are often cited as the 'most empathic ape' yet a comparison to their chimp cousins has never been done. So we directly compared their consolation tendencies

We found big overlaps between the two species plus considerable within-species variation

open-access link below!

Can you see the snake near the nut-cracking anvil in the first 🌌? That is one of the dangers for capuchin 🐒 when going to the ground to use tools. In our new paper, we describe a snake attack on a capuchin in Ubajara Park 🇧🇷
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@neoprego.org @tati-valenca.bsky.social

New Preprint! 🦧 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! Summary in 🧵