Michael Haslam

A kākāpō chick in a nest with an egg. Credit: Deidre Vercoe

The first #kakapo chick for four years hatched two days ago (on Valentine’s Day for those who like to anthropomorphise!). Here’s Tiwhiri-A1-2026 in Yasmine’s nest. 📸: Deidre Vercoe. www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-r... #kakapo2026 #conservation #parrots #birds

I’m holding a paperback copy of Premee Mohamed’s superb 2024 book The Butcher of the Forest. The cover has cute/menacing creatures on a dark leafy background. Behind the book are blurry shelves in a bookshop.

The real test of a bookshop’s quality is whether it carries books by @premeemohamed.com

The big Dymocks in Sydney passes but only by the bare minimum of having The Butcher of the Forest 📚🇦🇺

Fantastic opportunity to work with us at Shark Bay Dolphin Research 👇🏻

A bright pink dragonfly perched on a grey twig, with a blurry sandy background

Lovely hot pink dragonfly I saw in Serra da Capivara National Park, Piaui, Brazil 💘

No idea of species - I was there studying the capuchin monkeys so I’m only sure it’s not a monkey

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...

The next session of our transdisciplinary (biology-philosophy) seminar on Agency will take place next Wednesday. Marek Špinka will talk about play in nonhuman animals,
and I expect it to be super cool ! 😎

More info here :
www.animalinventiveness.com/post/seminar...

Unravelling the Palaeolithic 2026!

Join us for two days of all things Palaeolithic, Pleistocene and Early Human Origins at UCL Institute of Archaeology 19-20th June.

Call for papers is now open and tickets are on sale! Check out our website for more information.

sites.google.com/view/unravel...

Absolutely - I tried to fit research animals into the CRediT authorship system and couldn’t. Unless they can get recognition for jointly coming up with the idea for a study through their prior behaviour. For all the work Kanzi did over decades I was interested in how people ultimately saw his role

Really interesting work! Out of genuine curiosity did you consider at any point putting Kanzi in the acknowledgements, or even pushing for him to be a co-author of this study? With his abilities I’m wondering what it might take for apes to become collaborators not subjects. I’m not sure myself…

Without doubt Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. Hard to get more alien!

A kākāpō on a nest with two eggs. Credit: Andrew Digby

Three more #kakapo nests found on Pukenui/Anchor Island yesterday. Here's Konini with her two eggs. We have found nests for 26 out of the 36 adult females on the island, with more to come in the next few days. It's a big year! #conservation #kakapo2026 A

A very fine octopus encountered at Fly Point (Australia) today. Like an old battleship.

Fascinating to see the considered views of actual AI expert @melaniemitchell.bsky.social put next to the ramblings of medieval military historian Yuval Noah Harari in @nytimes.com 🤖🏺

archive.ph/0uZJX

Fascinating to see the considered views of actual AI expert @melaniemitchell.bsky.social put next to the ramblings of medieval military historian Yuval Noah Harari in @nytimes.com 🤖🏺

archive.ph/0uZJX

Realistic illustration of a Seven-spot archerfish (Toxotes chatareus), and white-brown fish with black spots, shooting water into the air.

#ProjectAnimalia 787: Seven-spot archerfish (Toxotes chatareus)

I'll never get over the amazing hunting strategy of this #fish. Shooting water up to 2m to knock insects off vegetation.

#sciart #dailyart #animalart #scientificillustration #medart #illustration #animalart #sundayfishsketch #oceanart

Why don’t all animals use tools? Does tool use = intelligence?

From twigtechnology@bsky.social and my new paper: “Instead of asking what rare and essential gifts allow only certain animals to use tools, we ask: why don’t they all?” static1.squarespace.com/static/5f620...

I'm looking for animal studies to cover again! Hit me up!

Humans being distracted by WWII saved perhaps a quarter of a million whales from being hunted and killed, as the practice ramped up to its 1960s peak.

More great work from the folks at @ourworldindata.org 🐋🧪📊

Colour image of the planet Mars, from NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Astrology was right. Mars controls human fate*

*by its gravity altering Earth’s orbit and therefore cycles of cooling and warming over evolutionary timescales, including changing the timing of Earth’s ice ages 🧪❄️🌍

archive.ph/KzaqA

We’re hiring a Field Project Manager with the Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee Project!

Help run a growing wild chimpanzee research & conservation project in West Africa 🐵

Apply by 24 Feb (open until filled). More info via QR code in the image. Note: Right to work in the EU required. #job #conservation

Brilliant work, congratulations!

“if you were a kid, this would give you kind of anxiety”

Once again, if you worry about giving a chatbot anxiety, you should be really concerned about the head trauma you’re giving your hammer

🤖🔨🧪

A starling flock shifting low to the ground beside the Neolithic Skara Brae site in Orkney. The clouds above are white and fluffy, which is a rarity for 2026 so far.

Glorious morning here at #StarlingBrae 🪶🧪🏺

Sentience in cephalopod molluscs: an updated assessment This article evaluates the evidence for sentience – the capacity to have feelings – in cephalopod molluscs: octopus, cuttlefish, squid, and nautilus. Our framework includes eight criteria, covering b...

For those cephalopod lovers among you, our new updated review of the evidence for cephalpod sentience has now been published in Biological Reviews. (Sadly the picture is of birds rather than cephalopods, as this is the journal cover!)
doi.org/10.1002/brv....

Congratulations!

The diffusion of cooperative and solo bubble net feeding in Canadian Pacific humpback whales Abstract. Animal culture, information and behaviours acquired and shared by social learning are a form of biodiversity with intrinsic and practical value.

New paper on the social learning of bubble net feeding by humpbacks in British Columbia, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B 🐋
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

#marmam @bcwhales.bsky.social @seamammalresearch.bsky.social @lrendell.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social [1/5]

New paper (pre-print) out w/ @twigtechnology.bsky.social : Why don’t all animals use tools? If you’re into critters, game theory, cyborgs, tech, and/or the glories of the natural world, do give it a whirl 🐛🐇🛠️🧰

Research

With all this talk of cow tools now's a good time to mention my new paper with @abigaildesmond.bsky.social titled 'Why don't all animals use tools?' 🧪🛠️🐮

It's in press at the journal Animal Behaviour & Cognition. You can get a pdf of the accepted version from the research page of my site 🧵 1/

We've been writing this paper for a couple of years, so it's encouraging to see cases like Veronika's. Focusing on how animals perceive and respond to objects will hopefully help us get past the idea that all members of a species are the same, and bring environmental interaction to the fore /end

Our definition of tool use is broader than most: attentional use of enabling objects. We look at feedback loops that extend through animal, tool and environment, and the reliability of looped information. We suggest self-directed tools will be most easily discovered, as shown by Veronika the cow /3

We suggest that any animal can use tools. Ants, beetles, fish, bears, birds & molluscs do it. Even cows. It's not contingent on 'intelligence', dexterity or brain shape/size. We use ideas from cybernetics, game theory and behavioural economics to argue tool use isn't difficult, it's fragile 2/