Michael Haslam

“Fishes, but not other vertebrates, are repeatedly asked, in increasingly elaborate experiential designs, to prove that they can feel pain.”

🐟🐠🧪🧠

(I filmed this near Deerness in October 2023)

Seals singing in a sea cave

#Orkney 🦭🎧

A thoughtful look at the seals and selkies with which we’ve long shared these islands, from @cammy-06.bsky.social.

(Sadly the superb @sapiens.org magazine that published this piece runs out of funding at the end of 2025. Enjoy it while it exists!) 🦭

It's Friday, and apparently bluesky is ready for this fun revelation:

Dinosaurs lived on the other side the Galaxy.

“those who were left, triumphant and mad at their success, recreated the whole world on its broken places”

Another glittering dark gem from @premeemohamed.com

Ape ancestors and Neanderthals likely kissed

This headline does not mean what I thought it meant 🧪💋

Have wild wolves learned to use tools? Video captures a lone female pulling crab traps out of the water, but does it count as tool use?

Still pushing my and @abigaildesmond.bsky.social’s term ‘fixel’ for tool-like fixed objects (incl. ropes, vines, anvils, scratching posts, etc.).

Using tools or fixels doesn’t mean any animal is ‘smarter’ than any other. It does tell us about how they perceive what matters in their world.

🏺🧪🛠️🐺🦀

A small pale coloured clay figurine, cracked and ancient, is paired in this image with an artist’s reconstruction of its original form. The figurine shows a crouched woman with her head tilted to her left, while a large goose beak and head peer over her shoulder. Its wings extend down her sides.

FYI here’s the figurine, and an artistic reconstruction

A 12,000-year-old clay figurine of a woman and a goose marks symbolic innovations in Southwest Asia | PNAS Paleolithic representations of human–animal interaction are rare, with only a few painted or engraved examples recorded in Upper Paleolithic contex...

12,000 years ago in what is today northern Israel, someone made a tiny clay image of a woman. Mating with a goose. Today that figurine got its own prestigious scientific paper.

The lesson: make weird art. Express whatever is in you, however you want. In AD 14,000 they will thank you

🏺🧪🎨🎭🪿

Do bees see nothing? Primates with damage to the visual cortex have no conscious visual experience, but display adaptive visual behaviour (a phenomenon called blindsight). Here I team up with two primate researchers to ask if bee vision could be similar to blindsight. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

What does it feel like to be a remora?

It seems that, despite the benefits they provide, whales do not like their presence and do everything they can to get rid of them. They observe them, jump several times, and check again to see if they are still there.

(blog) phys.org/news/2025-11...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1939 Can't sign in? Forgot your password?

Why did consciousness evolve?

What’s it for?

The latest issue of @royalsociety.org Philosophical Transactions B has a series of papers from very smart people on this topic, covering all kinds of creatures 🧠🧪🤔

royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

3 year postdoc funded by @ukri.org NERC on between-group cooperation in the Shark Bay dolphins is now live - please share widely 🙏 www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

The introduction to Turing’s paper titled ‘Computing Machinery and intelligence’: I PROPOSE to consider the question, 'Can machines think ?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine' and "think'.The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think' are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, 'Can machines think ?' is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

Introduction to an opinion piece published in the New York Times on 8 November 2025, by Barbara Gail Montero, titled ‘A.I. Is on Its Way to Something Even More Remarkable Than Intelligence’: Not long ago, A.I. became intelligent. Some may dismiss this claim, but the number of people who doubt A.I.'s acumen is dwindling. According to a 2024 YouGov poll, a clear majority of U.S. adults say that computers are already more intelligent than people or will become so in the near future.

On the left, Alan Turing’s 1950 paper introducing the imitation game, where he says that using public polling as a guide to whether machines are intelligent is absurd.

On the right, yesterday’s NYT opinion piece using public polling as a guide to whether machines are intelligent.

🧪🤖

A passage from Mary Shelley’s 1818 book Frankenstein: Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of Scotland, and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the monster followed me, and would discover himself to me when I should have finished, that he might receive his companion. With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands, and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labours. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from the main land, which was about five miles distant.

Watching @realgdt.bsky.social’s excellent new Frankenstein film reminded me of a specific passage from the book.

Mary Shelley wanted somewhere extremely remote and depressing for Victor Frankenstein to create the companion for his ‘monster’. So she sent him to…Orkney

📚🧬⚡️

Update: the Buckquoy Pictish site and surrounding coast looking their best this afternoon 🏺

I can say that as a newcomer to Orkney in the fairly recent past the local people have been nothing but welcoming and supportive!

Excellent thread on new dates from the #Orkney Pictish Buckquoy site, 5 minutes from my house.

If you’re visiting the Norse settlement (or looking for puffins) on the Brough of Birsay, this site is beside the carpark before you walk across to the Brough at low tide 🏺🧪🌊

Adopt a kākāpō Kākāpō adoptions are a special way to support the conservation of this taonga species. You can adopt a kākāpō for yourself or as a gift.

Looking for a different gift idea this year? How about a #kakapo adoption? Adoptions are open again until 25th Nov, with postage or email options. These fund a significant proportion of our programme and make a real difference to the #conservation work we do. Thanks! www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/kak...

Seminar Agency between Biology and Philosophy 2025/2026 Here, you will find the 2025-2026 programme, and general information about our seminar. The introductory post can be found here.ProgrammeThis year, we will meet each second Wednesday of each month, fr...

Our seminar on animal agency, between biology and philosophy, is back !
Check out the programme for the next sessions here !
We meet on the second Wednesday of each month, on Zoom, from 4 to 5 PM (UK time).
You’re very welcome to join ! :)

www.animalinventiveness.com/post/seminar...

A black and white photo of stone furniture inside a stone house. The floor is clay. A small doorway is visible in the upper right, but the image is dominated by the upper edge of a sandstone slab in the centre. The slab has a series of lines carved into it, not a language, but clearly meaningful to the Neolithic people that made them.

What spooky #Orkney site is this?

It’s the view inside House 7 at Skara Brae, the one we keep locked. The only two skeletons found at this ancient village were under the wall to the left. Look closely to see Neolithic carvings in the stone, made over 4500 years ago….if you dare

#Halloween 🏺💀

Brilliant new study (preprint) led by @noraslania.bsky.social on how wild eastern chimpanzees observe each other.

'Peering'—or close-range attentive observation—happens in all kinds of contexts and esp. for young chimps, opening the door to new cultural traits 🧪👀

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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...

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” 🧵

#CrowCoG is hiring🚨MULTIPLE PAID RESEARCH ASSISTANT POSITIONS 🚨for our 2026 field season (May - Sep)! Field and aviary-based positions - come help us study the remarkable tool-making New Caledonian crows. Apply here: bit.ly/3WlxxHE

Spiders Are Smart, Not Scary Spiders aren't just spooky Halloween mascots. Their keen senses, complex behaviors, and diverse lifestyles make them excellent subjects for cognitive studies.

This time of year, spiders receive a lot of attention for their creepier qualities. But researchers value them year-round for pulling off impressive cognitive feats with very little brains.

A striped dinosaur with fluffy tail, jumping in front of red moon and catching a long-tailed early bird

"Cretaceous Thriller"
Sinocalliopteryx: the bird-swallowing dinosaur 🪶

Stained glass piece of a black hole in blues

Part of the stained glass piece being put together before soldering

Remember the poster inspired by stained glass?
Well, I decided to actually try making a mini version, in real glass. I haven't cut or solder glass in my entire life. Maybe starting with 32 pieces was a bad idea.

I forgot I could’ve just painted glass instead.

It’s awful. I love it.
#sciart #art

Everyone Keeps Saying Probably - PSYCHOPOMP.COM Publisher's Note: Please enjoy this short story by Premee Mohamed, who, coincidentally(!!), has a book out from Psychopomp on February 11th. It's called One

At some point I will do the 'what I had out this year' roundup... two novellas, some longer stories, some shorter, and this one, my shortest! EVERYONE KEEPS SAYING PROBABLY is free to read at @psychopomp.com :)

psychopomp.com/everyone-kee...

Congratulations, this is so well deserved!