Jenny Michlich

Orcas Sometimes Give Humans Presents Of Food And We Don’t Know Why Combined with their recent fad for sinking yachts, killer whales are starting to look like the Robin Hoods of the sea.

🐋 Wild orcas offer prey to humans

In a rare set of encounters, killer whales were observed giving fish, mammals, & even seaweed to humans at sea. Scientists suggest it may be a form of interspecies altruism.

🔗 www.iflscience.com/orcas-someti...

#SciComm #AnimalBehaviour #Orcas 🧪

😙 Whistle while you sing 😙

Preprint from Smith et al. (@evolbrain.bsky.social) on biomechanics of singing mouse song

🐭 larynx emits pitch w/out vocal membrane vibration -> whistle mechanism
🐭 relies on laryngeal air sac
🐭 ablations narrow down to edge or cavity model

#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics

Maybe worth emphasizing that yes this dataset contains 10 (astral) years of near continuous wild mouse tracking

We’ve made it fully open source for the first time here: bit.ly/4lfFBEk

Explanations of data tables at the link above and in our supp info: bit.ly/4lb1Bjs

We hope people explore it!

Graphical abstract for "Vocal communication is seasonal in social groups of wild, free-living house mice." The abstract has, from top to bottom, a title, four middle image panels, and two bottom text panels. Image title: "Vocal communication in social groups of wild-free living house mice" Middle image panels from left to right: (1) An aerial snap shot of the region where the study site is located, an agricultural landscape in rural Switzerland. (2) An image of the study site, a small barn in the forest inhabited by mice. (3) An image of a radio frequency identification (RFID) box used to track mouse social interactions. A mouse is entering the box from the left while another sits outside. (4) A spectrogram showing example vocalizations - one low frequency squeak and one ultrasonic call - recorded from an RFID box. Bottom panels: Left: Data Collection  - 10 years of RFID-based tracking data (from 6,946 mice) - 15 months of acoustic monitoring (totaling 6,594 hours) - Machine learning for vocal detection and labeling (CNN) Right: Key Findings - Vocalization is seasonal (most in spring and summer) - Vocalization is associated with the presence of pups - Vocalization is correlated with social group dynamics

Very happy to share the latest from my postdoc‬!

10 yrs of mouse social networks + 1.25 yrs of acoustic data ➡️ insight into vocalization & sociality in a wild population of your favorite lab model 🐁

paper: bit.ly/4n93yyD
data: bit.ly/4lfFBEk
code: bit.ly/4kNnMwx

#bioacoustics #neuroskyence

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emotion wheel starting with "joy, fear, anger" in the center and then lapsing into gibberish

a friend of mine shared this ai-generated "emotion wheel" and unfortunately i have been laughing my ass off at it for like 15 minutes now. today i am feeling Fnliinneon

Photo of four philosophers standing in a row: Tony Chemero, Mel Andrews, Zvi Biener, Angela Potochnik

Congratulations to Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social for successfully defending their dissertation, The Math is Not the Territory: On the Uses & Abuses of Machine Learning & Other Mathematical Modelling Strategies! #philsky #philsci @ucphilosophy.bsky.social

🚨 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

just saw @paleopragmatist.bsky.social reading this

Looking for internship student who would like to learn about pig behaviour and cognition. When: July-August 2025, Where: Warschau, Poland

I have seen folks waste so much time by not properly planning research. Missed literature, missing controls, ignored hypotheses, etc. Lack of planning also produces bad science (e.g. analysis until significant). So I am writing an app. Looking for feedback. scientific-paper-planner-test.vercel.app

The effect of social structure on vocal flexibility in monk parakeets | Royal Society Open Science The social complexity hypothesis argues that communicative complexity arises as a result of social complexity, with this occurring through mechanisms including plasticity and selection. Most research to date has focused on ultimate drivers of repertoire ...

Our latest paper just came out. We found that more social parrots have a better vocabulary and females produce more variable call types than males. You can read more here: doi.org/10.1098/rsos.... (PS: the bird in the picture is not a parrot but the cover of RSOS.)

NYU Launches the Wildlife Inclusive Local Development (WILD) Lab New lab will advance research and policy to support wild animals in urban environments

1/ The NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program is growing! Thanks to a generous grant from the New York Community Trust, our team is thrilled to announce a brand-new, first-of-its-kind project at the science-policy nexus: the Wildlife Inclusive Local Development (WILD) Lab.

Sylvia found her cousins!

Early Emergence of Metacognition in Rhesus Monkeys Metacognition, or monitoring and controlling one's knowledge, is a key feature of human cognition. Accumulating evidence shows that foundational forms of metacognition are already present in young in...

Early Emergence of Metacognition in Rhesus Monkeys - by @yiyunh.bsky.social & @alexrosati.bsky.social #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1111/desc...

AS LONG AS THERE IS LOVE, THERE WILL BE GRIEF. The grief of time passing, of life moving on half-finished, of empty spaces that were once bursting with the laughter and energy of people we loved. As long as there is love there will be grief because grief is love's natural continuation. It shows up in the aisles of stores we once frequented, in the half-finished bottle of wine we pour out, in the whiff of cologne we get two years after they've been gone. Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcasting loudly, "Love was here." In the finer print, quietly, "Love still is." HEIDI PRIEBE

“As long as there is love, there will be grief….Grief is a neon sign…broadcasting loudly, ‘Love was here.’ In the finer print, quietly, ‘Love still is.’”

Sharing this with deep gratitude to author @heidipriebe.bsky.social.

Vocal communication between humans and animals In this article, we review the scientific literature examining vocal communication between humans and other animals, with a focus on dog-human interac…

Your dog understands you (& vice-versa). But why and how? 👇 New review paper by ENES Bioacoustics Research & Co.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#bioacoustics #dog

Mammal spines follow Hox gene rules, but birds and amphibians break the pattern By analyzing the arrangement of vertebrae in the spines of nearly 400 species of tetrapods—a group of animals with four limbs, such as mammals, reptiles, and birds—RIKEN researchers have found some fo...

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Join us on May 20, 9 am (PT) for the 6th Reproducibility Rounds - 𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐚𝐛 𝐁𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥: 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐈𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞. Registration at: stanford.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

A case for broadening our view of mechanism in developmental biology ABSTRACT. Developmental biologists can perform studies that describe a phenomenon (descriptive work) and/or explain how the phenomenon works (mechanistic work). There is a prevalent perception that mo...

This issue has become more acute in recent years. A narrow view of "mechanistic" experiments holds us back.

"A case for broadening our view of mechanism in developmental biology"
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

What role does the vocal membrane play in the larynx?

Yamamoto et al. build a silicon model of a rhesus macaque larynx based on CT scans, then run physical expts

www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ast/...

#prattle 💬
#bioacousrics

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I’m not really here to change your mind, but I saw the person you were interacting with struggling a bit with you. Seeing that, I wouldn’t really engage beyond what I will just say now. These are active areas of research that are being performed by biologists and in dialogue with biologists.

Sex and Biology: Broader Impacts Beyond the Binary Synopsis. What are the implications of misunderstanding sex as a binary, and why is it essential for scientists to incorporate a more expansive view of bio

academic.oup.com/icb/article/...

This might be a good place to start if you are a skeptic. Like many ideas in the sciences, the language that we use gets entrenched in the literature and like any area of the sciences the language we use and what we know changes over time.

I am grateful for Pope Francis, for his gentleness and compassion, for his resolute commitment to justice for migrants and the poor, and for developing Catholic Social Teaching toward an integral ecology that showed that a Christian vision of social life must also take responsibility for the earth.

1/2 Chimpanzees share alcohol.

They recorded and studied for the first time how chimpanzees (Cantanhez, Guinea-Bissau) actively seek out fermented fruit and consume it in company (70 occasions). The "sharing" was mostly tolerating other nearby chimpanzees.

(paper) www.cell.com/current-biol...

🐸 We're excited to announce our upcoming workshop on Animal Communication

📅Save the date... see you in Valencia!

🔗: decrep.blogs.uv.es/workshop-ani...

Super happy! Published teaching module: Understanding Natural Selection: Definitions, Historical Development, Mechanisms, and Usage in Contemporary Times qubeshub.org/publications... @juleyvc.bsky.social @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social @tyandresbray.bsky.social 🧪🧬👩‍🔬 #newPI #RIE2 #TeachingEvolution

YouTube video by Fig. 1 by University of California Are TikTok’s “talking" dogs legit — or just a clever trick? Science explains

Thank you
@ucnewsroom.bsky.social for creating this informative and even handed representation of the challenges and opinions around pets pushing buttons to communicate with humans. See below a few papers we published on it. We have 3 more on the way (one about cats)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTnV...

Use of Augmentative Interspecies Communication devices in animal language studies: A review Similar in function and design to Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices—interfaces originally developed and used to produce words on behalf of language-impaired human users—Augmentative ....

This is a review of prior research on Augmentative Interspecies Communication devices (such as lexigrams and buttons) with animals. Some of the things we learn and some of the mistakes that were made.

wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Our new paper is out. We point out that large brained (and often smart) mammals and birds have evolved very different distribution of neurons numbers in the brain.
This means that similar cognitive abilities have evolved in very different brains.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Please share with students interested in #Anthrozoology #HumanAnimalStudies
Call for papers closes 16 June:
#AIP2025 is a perfect opportunity for 1st-time presenters to present, network, & learn. Check out website for FAQs & links to resources: anthrozoologyconference.com