Michael Haslam

The origins and functions of bowers in the Bowerbirds: a review and synthesis | doi.org/10.1080/0158... | Emu | #ornithology 🪶

Australian bird of the year 2025: vote for your favourite #birdoftheyear in the Guardian / BirdLife Australia poll From little penguins to (very big) cassowaries, every bird has its fans. Vote for your favourite in the 2025 Guardian/BirdLife Australia poll

Reminder to vote each day (until 15 October) for Baudin's black cockatoo as Australia’s bird of the year.

Its jarrah habitat in Western Australia is about to be cleared for bauxite mining. Every bit of attention this endangered bird gets could help it continue to exist 🪶 🇦🇺🧪

A very tall stone carved on all sides, inside a protective glass box. The stone is in a grassy park with trees and houses nearby.

Detail of the base of the standing stone. On the thin face are carved mermen and people with swords. On the broad face at the base are a series of gashes in the stone, left by ancient warriors as part of an oath-taking ceremony.

For #StandingStoneSunday the magnificent Sueno’s Stone. Likely named for the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, but dating to the late 800s Pictish Fortriu kingdom.

It’s over 6 metres tall, with scenes of battle and beheading. The base has sword cuts from warriors pledging to their king 🏺🧪👑

📷 29 September 2025

A very tall stone carved on all sides, inside a protective glass box. The stone is in a grassy park with trees and houses nearby.

Detail of the base of the standing stone. On the thin face are carved mermen and people with swords. On the broad face at the base are a series of gashes in the stone, left by ancient warriors as part of an oath-taking ceremony.

For #StandingStoneSunday the magnificent Sueno’s Stone. Likely named for the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, but dating to the late 800s Pictish Fortriu kingdom.

It’s over 6 metres tall, with scenes of battle and beheading. The base has sword cuts from warriors pledging to their king 🏺🧪👑

📷 29 September 2025

Remember to hydra-te 🐉 🐉 🐉

An adult female kākāpō in an underground nest next to three eggs. Credit: Andrew Digby

Sad to report that we've lost another #kakapo, and a particularly significant one. Solstice was the last kākāpō rediscovered, found on Rakiura in 1997. She died on the weekend as a result of complications from the #disease cloacitis. There are now 237 kākāpō left. #conservation #parrots #birds

A two page spread of national geographic magazine with a story by Jane Goodall and her husband reporting on egg-breaking, tool-using Egyptian vultures.

Jane Goodall was also the first to bring attention to wild tool-using vultures, which she spotted randomly one day while out driving. These birds use stones to break into ostrich eggs.

Be observant like Jane and who knows what you’ll see! 🧪🥚

Jane Goodall convinced a reluctant world that apes use tools, then became one of the great environmentalists. She never gave up hope for a better world, and was an inspiration to all who met her, including children worldwide.

Thank you Jane.

A tall stone column in the centre of a spacious octagonal room, supporting a vaulted stone ceiling with radiating supports. Intricate glass windows are on each wall, with slightly different designs. A low bench with blue cushioning runs around the lower part of the walls.

The same room as the previous photo, looking straight up at the vaulted ceiling from beside the central column. The impression is like looking at a stone star, or spiderweb.

My new favourite place from late medieval/Middle Ages Scotland. The Chapter House at Elgin Cathedral, rebuilt in the 1400s 🏺

📷 29 September 2025

Your daily reminder that tool use is not about ‘intelligence’ or having hands. It’s about a coincidence of object and actor with time to explore and a need to fill.

Whether tool use spreads can depend on social stuff like who’s watching, but isolated tool use springs up everywhere all the time 🏺🐮🛠️🧪

I’m not sure of the origin of the video, possibly Gus the Brahman on Facebook (I’m not on Facebook so can’t dig deeper there)

Your daily reminder that tool use is not about ‘intelligence’ or having hands. It’s about a coincidence of object and actor with time to explore and a need to fill.

Whether tool use spreads can depend on social stuff like who’s watching, but isolated tool use springs up everywhere all the time 🏺🐮🛠️🧪

A long exposure phone camera photo of a dark sky crossed by the Milky Way and dusted with stars. The top of some pine trees are at the bottom of the image. It’s quite blurry if you zoom in.

Night sky in the Cairngorms, Scotland

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🔭🪐

(📷 yesterday)

#ESHE2025
Rhianna Drummond-Clarke ‘First documentation and quantification of wild chimpanzee rock climbing’
Camera traps, Issa Valley TZ & Moyen Bafing, Guinea chimps

Rock vs tree climbing: more dynamic movements, biomech diff locomotor modes, reaching further- role of uneven substrates!
Amazing 😍

📢JOB alert📢
Application for the camp manager position at the @taichimpproject.bsky.social is open now. We seek a new camp manager starting on January 1, 2026, for 2+1 years (3rd year optional) working with and for wild chimpanzees in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire.👇

emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/I...

Huge thanks for all these updates Marta!

Promotional poster for the 1966 film One Million Years BC, in honour of the finding announced today that the Homo sapiens lineage may have been around for that long. The poster features Raquel Welch, some dinosaurs, and the tag line ‘This is the way it was’

This is the way it was 🏺

A new fossil reconstruction implies our lineage was separate by a million years ago 🏺💀🧪

‘The origin of the longi clade can be inferred to be about 1.2 Ma, slightly older than the Yunxian fossils. The origin of the sapiens clade is estimated to be about 1.02 Ma, also close to the age of Yunxian’

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪

Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students.

I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

#PossumArchaeology 🏺

dragonfly on concrete. green head, bright blue abdomen

Somehow, somehow the knowledge of where to go and when to leave is encoded in the genes of the green darner dragonfly.
I found this one, a male judging from his neon blue abdomen, sitting on the concrete outside a store in a strip mall in Atlanta. He likely hatched in a pond in Quebec or NY 🧵...

Text reads: Google search bar: “how to clean a rescued pigeon” Al Overview Pigeons are usually clean, even wild ones. You can try these steps to clean a rescued pigeon: • Remove the label • Remove the head • Make a small incision in the wing and snap to join •Cut off the wing •Remove the legs • Clean the top bone

Oh.

That doesn’t seem right

Congratulations!

Colour photo of a sunrise over a low hill on the left. It illuminates grasslands and a loch on the right, with banks of mist in the distance. Closer there is a barbed wire fence and five cows (or coos as we call them up here) standing peacefully in their paddock.

Coos in the mist 🐄

Sunday sunrise in Birsay, #Orkney

A common house gecko, tail still attached. Image credit Basile Morin for Animalia.bio, CC BY-SA 3.0

Lizards are famous for their ability to detach their tails under stress. But how do they manage to drop them so quickly, and why do they never seem to accidentally lose their tails if they come off so easily?

1/8 🧪⚛️

A wide, panorama-type illustration showing 12 Przewalski's horses in a crescent formation. They are in calm poses, some standing and watching the viewer, others slowly walking towards them.

#SciArtSeptember 13 - Bottleneck

We almost lost the last wild horses. At the end of the 1950s, there were only 12 Przewalski's horses left.

After decades of conservation efforts, there are now a couple thousand horses living in zoos and conservation areas in several countries, from Spain to China.

A dolphin image on a blue background. Text reads: Happy world dolphin day! Did you know that some dolphins use sponges to protect their noses whilst rummaging for food? Check out our dolphin episode: below the surface.

Happy world dolphin day!

Most of us probably can't see a dolphin today but you can celebrate by checking out our dolphin episode: Below the surface with @stephanielking.bsky.social

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/69Gt...
Other links in bio.

#dolphin #WorldDolphinDay

New paper on precise tool use learning in carrion crows @currentbiology.bsky.social. We show that—like New Caledonian crows—expert carrion crows pay close attention to the working end of their tool, suggesting tool integration into their peripersonal space. 🧵 & vids! 👇

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

NASA hasn't found life on Mars yet – but signs are promising A rock found last year on the surface of Mars offered tantalising evidence that life once existed on the Red Planet. Now scientists have found yet more evidence that could point to the existence of an...

News from Mars reminds us that all life on Earth is basically an offshoot of rocks and water. Some of the rock water got alive, most didn’t

Quokkas are soooo adorable! 🤩
#quokka #drawing #australia #animalart