Drew Altschul

◇Levi◇ on Instagram: "I've actually made so much Improvement over the last 3 days! Day 1 I couldn't hold for even 1 sec away from the wall Yesterday i could barely hold 3 sec And today a bit longer!🤩... 46K likes, 198 comments - calisthenicslevi on January 7, 2026: "I've actually made so much Improvement over the last 3 days! Day 1 I couldn't hold for even 1 sec away from the wall Yesterday i could ...

Cute and funny dog video, but... is the dog doing behavioral imitation??
www.instagram.com/reel/DTM_yNR...

Weigh in for me CE folks...

Periodic reminder that without biodiversity, we’re all doomed.

Let’s not brush it aside and focus solely on carbon (obviously critical).

Focusing on carbon while sidelining biodiversity is a catastrophic mistake.

Biodiversity isn’t optional. It’s fundamental to our very existence.

1/2 Ai, the chimpanzee who revolutionized science from Kyoto, has died at the age of 49.
She was the first chimpanzee to learn Arabic numerals.
Here you can see her in action in Tetsuro Matsuzawa's laboratory.

My main point was - If one gets a demanding reviewer, they may well ask for the addition and restructuring a lot of content, which could go against the authors’ view, approach, style, whatever you want to call it. Interference of that sort, which is not uncommon, can really damage academic writing.

Hadn't thought about the analogy with law before. But it makes sense, as do the other points on expertise.

Of course many of us academics also think other academics' writing is bad; that's where much of the criticism stems from.

And that fuels reviews that I think often make the writing worse.

99% of cakes are far too sweet to be genuinely delicious

hah! That's rotational velocity even, a different thing from the usual type, unless translated into such... Seemingly almost unintuitive by design

“Auld Land Syne” on a Stylophone.
#NewYearsEve

A call for CARE in animal behaviour: an holistic ethical research framework Despite increasing awareness of animal welfare, there are vast discrepancies between legal protections and recommended practices for different species…

🚨 Our new paper is out!! A call for CARE in animal behaviour: an holistic ethical research framework 🐾💚 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Done!

And it seems pretty unlikely that you'd get effects that big when there isn't a substantial causal influence. Particularly when there are null findings coming out of the same data to contrast with (e.g. body image)!

Cripes. They're using Cohen's outdated effect size standards, too. Should be using the revised versions, ala Funder and Ozer. >0.3 is a large effect size. >0.4 is huge, and these are the levels they're reporting at. This should not be downplayed, these are BIG effects.

The Emperor of All Molochs

From Moloch to Azathoth

A story in logic:
'Are Lovecrafting Horrors really on the same level as AI slop?'
'Lovecraft's Cthulhu-esque creations are twisted, but in a biological way, as depicted in modern media.
Like cancer.'
......
'Is current generative AI a cancer?'
......
'But then, a cancer of what?'

@realprimatthias.bsky.social

Definitely a paper I'll need to read, and I haven't, yet, so I can't say they ignore this, but, there are lots of examples of animals treating themselves as conspecifics in the mirror, and then threatening the image of themself. I've seen my dog do it. That isn't about motivation, or affordances...

This is intriguing... tho what 'seekers' are doing may not be the same as identity formation as usually conceived by the psychologists. Worth finding out

Opinion | Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

Is behavioral optimism really an emotion?

📢 New article out in PLOS BIology!

It was truly a pleasure and honour be a part of the core team members to lead this study and work alongside 129 collaborators from 82 institutions across 24 countries - the largest ever comparative study of neophobia in 🐦! 🥰

wow I've made some comparable errors on the train in my time and never once have they actually charged me anything

This is so cool. Thanks for watching!

A group of 10 smiling people pose for a photo in front of a large monitor. On the monitor, you can see the title slide from Drew Altschul's Big Team Science Conference talk about ManyPrimates. Everyone is having a GREAT TIME!

We received this dispatch from a @uop-ccep.bsky.social @uopcidd.bsky.social BTSCON viewing party. Look at all the Big Team Science FUN they're having! WE LOVE TO SEE IT!!

(👀 @dremalt.bsky.social @manyprimates.bsky.social)

Other minds are foreign countries

Or maybe just an attempt to write Hari Seldon's seminal paper on Psychohistory, in a grounded, non-fictional way

Most entertaining entry - "Cliodynamics 100 years on: Psychology's integral role in the study of predicting the future, in the future"

100 years? This might as well be a short story collection of speculative fiction. "This issue is about scientific foresight, not science fiction." Okay, I mean, good luck?

I think it'd be more valuable *and* enjoyable to read something like David Eagleman's "Sum"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sum:_Fo...

Such a loss. Hard to understate how much Jane Goodall did for the field of primatology, and probably all of comparative psychology, animal cognition, animal behaviour... We are very much in her debt.

And its also just great that still to this day she would describe herself as an ethologist.

Thanks to Liza Muscovice & @goatswhostare.bsky.social for organizing, and to my co-presenter @bernhardvoelkl.bsky.social