Christoph Völter

A white and gray dog touches a yellow dot hanging on the wall with his nose. Text says ManyDogs 2 - Join the Team!

🚨 Calling all dog behavior & cognition researchers - ManyDogs Project is launching ManyDogs 2!

🔍🐕‍🦺We're studying overimitation: Do dogs copy irrelevant actions just b/c their favorite human does them?

Email manydogsproject2@gmail.com to collaborate globally and contribute to reproducible science!

We're hiring📢📢📢
To complement our team we're currently looking for a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in animal communication and behaviour, ideally canids but not a must! Position is based in Vienna, Austria, and available for 4 years. Please check the attachment for details 🐺🐶😊

Starting a research site on an Indonesian island must be easy, right?
Find out about field work challenges in TALES FROM THE JUNGLE
🐦🌴

linktr.ee/wild_behavior_pod

@mohara.bsky.social @bmioduszewska.bsky.social @drracheldale.bsky.social
#FieldWork #indonesia #academiclife #AnimalBehaviour

🎊Fully funded PhD position on cooperative sustainability🌳

Are you curious about
🧒 developmental,
🌍 cross-cultural
🦧 species comparative
research on cooperative sustainability?

All info here or dm me with questions!
career2.successfactors.eu/sfcareer/job...
Please share! 🙏

New preprint w/ @christophvoelter.bsky.social et al.

Individual differences in great ape cognition across time and domains: stability, structure, and predictability

48 apes 🦍, 10 tasks 🧠, 10 sessions📊, 1.5 y📅
✅ Stable individual traits
❌ No g-factor
🤝 Social ≠ non-social

🔗: osf.io/preprints/ps...

I'm looking for a PhD Student at the intersection of Machine Learning and Developmental Psychology.

We study everyday experiences in children from 🇰🇪🇩🇪🇹🇷 and use ML models to quantify interactions.

4 years, fully funded, great team, beautiful location. Please share and apply!

tinyurl.com/2mafdyh4

Saving the cultural legacy of wild animals Loss of biodiversity threatens the study of tool use and other cultural behaviors in animals

Happy to have a new piece in @science.org with my friend Lydia where we draw attention to the significance of animal material culture for understanding human technical evolution and why we should digitally preserve and protect primate tools and tool use sites. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The Social & Cognitive Origins Group at Johns Hopkins University studies how humans and other animals think.

The Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University in full spring bloom.

🚨RT!

The Social & Cognitive Origins group at @jhuartssciences.bsky.social (social-cognitive-origins.com), directed by Dr. Christopher Krupenye, is recruiting a full-time research assistant or lab manager to begin Summer 2025. The position has a one-year minimum, w/ the possibility of extension. 1/

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

@mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social are seeking a PhD candidate in the field of psychology focusing on self-awareness in nonhuman great apes drawing from different methods such as touch screens experiments, playback experiments, eye tracking, and behavioural experiments www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

🦍🖥️New paper on great apes in virtual environments: Chimpanzee Turning Behavior During Spatial Navigation in Virtual Environments (animalbehaviorandcognition.org/article.php?id=1390). Led by Sarah Koopman, we went back to basics and asked a simple question about object permanence and optical flow.

PhD position in parrot tool use Job offer: applications opening 19th of February 2025. We are looking for a PhD student (funded by the Austrian Science Fund, FWF) for a doctoral project in the field of animal behaviour and cognition Project Title: Dexterity in the tool use of the Goffin’s cockatoo https://www.fwf.ac.at/forschungsradar/10.55776/PAT2728324 Project Location: The Messerli Research Institute is located at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. Its division on Comparative Cognition investigates cognitive abilities in both the social and physical domain of various, free-living as well as domesticated, animal species including Goffin’s cockatoos, keas, dogs, goats and pigs. https://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/messerli This PhD project will be conducted at the Goffin Lab in Lower Austria. https://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/cognition/goffin-lab Academic Supervision: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alice Auersperg (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna) Project Description: The Goffin’s cockatoo uses and builds tool -based technologies rivalling higher primates, both in captivity as well as in the wild. While we already understand a lot about what kinds of tools animals use in which context, we still know very little about the innovative process and fine-scaled mechanisms underlying such behaviour: how are the cockatoos able to innovate tool use in the first place? Thereby, it is important to consider behavioural as well as physical barriers that animals face when using tools. We currently predict that tool use techniques are strongly affected by the different properties of the tasks the birds are operating their tools upon. This PhD project aims to test to what extent the tool use techniques invented by aviary cockatoos in Austria manifest in a predictable manner based on specific tool and task properties. To achieve this, we plan to blend behavioural analysis and material physics. The findings of this project will help to understand the onset and mechanisms underlyi…

Deadline and project start: Please send your application before 1th of June 2025. The successful candidate can start in July at the earliest (we would like to have started the project by September of this year). Requirements • A master’s degree • A master’s thesis with a topic related to animal cognition/animal behaviour/comparative psychology or material science. • Genuine Interest in animal behaviour and cognition • At least some experience in direct interaction with animals (experience with animal testing is highly appreciated). • Comfortable with direct contact with parrots • Statistical knowledge (preferably experience in General Liner Mixed Models, PCA, Survival Analysis etcetera.) • Experience with R. • Excellent English skills written and spoken (additional German skills are highly appreciated) • Excellent teamworking and communication skills What we offer • Employment at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna via a FWF funding for a minimum of three years. • Access to institutional support (administrative support, statistician, IT manager, technician for experimental apparatuses). • Various scientific events including weekly seminars of comparative cognition researchers • Opportunity to visit international conferences. • Opportunity to visit social events for PhD students studying avian cognition in Vienna. • An international and interdisciplinary work environment at the Messerli Research Institute for Human-Animal Interaction. How to apply: Applications (email: alice.auersperg@vetmeduni.ac.at) will be considered until the 1st of June 2025 Only complete submissions will be taken into consideration. Your application should contain the following information: 1. A Cover Letter detailing your motivation for the research topic, relevant experience, and expectations for the position (max. 2 pages) 2. A Curriculum Vitae including copies of relevant university degree certificates 3. Contact details for two references (incl. email)

We have an exciting new position in our lab for a PhD on parrot tool use! See below

Screenshots of TANGO-CC trials. In Training 1, an agent looks at a balloon that falls to the ground, and participants have to respond by clicking/touching the balloon. In Training 2, the balloon falls behind the hedge while its flight is still visible. Participants respond by clicking the hedge where they think the balloon is. In test trials, the balloon’s movement and final position are covered by a hedge, and participants respond by clicking the hedge. In the task, all movements are smoothly animated (no still pictures). Yellow frames indicate the time point when participants respond (only illustrative, not shown during the task).

🚨Paper alert 🚨

Need a social cognition task for measuring individual- and community-level variation? We are excited to share the TANGO-CC with you! 👀

Paper: doi.org/10.1177/2515...

w/ @mcxfrank.bsky.social @patkanngiesser.bsky.social @kirstensutherland.bsky.social
@elmanubohn.bsky.social...

Do you like to dip your fries in ketchup before eating it? Our cockatoos do too! In a new study in Current Biology, we showed our cockatoos innovated a new way to flavour their food: they dunk noodles in blueberry soy yoghurt. Read about it and watch our video abstract: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Using mobile #eyetracking to study #dogs’ understanding of human referential communication. New study w/ Karoline Gerwisch, Paula Berg, Zsófia Virányi and Ludwig Huber
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Graphical abstract: In a stealing task, dogs had to choose between two plates with food; During prior exploration, only one of the plates was in line of sight of a human; In the test, the human was absent but indirect auditory cues signaled her presence; Despite being alone, dogs stole forbidden food from where they could not be seen

Canine perspective taking: Anticipating the behavior of an unseen human. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
New paper w/ L.Huber, P.van der Wolf, M.Menkveld & S.Riemer providing evidence that dogs prefer to steal from a plate unseen by a human when the human's presence has to be inferred from sound cues.

Career - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

New #PhDposition (cultural psychology) at the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at MPI-EVA: the project focuses on social cognition and will involve research in Germany (Leipzig), Namibia and Polynesia.
Application deadline: March 1st, 2025
www.eva.mpg.de/comparative-...

NEW PODCAST!
Woohoo 🥳 My side project with Megan Lambert is finally coming to fruition. If you're into animal behaviour and/or podcasts please give us a follow and subscribe 🎙️

#AVeryNotSeriousSciencePodcast #SciComm #animal #podcast

Advertising for 2 fully funded PhD projects on cooperation in children, apes and across cultures. Co-supervised by Juliane Kaminski @comparativeminds.bsky.social and Esther Herrmann. See below for links. Message me if interested!

Not sure, the dog studies were not included in the meta-analysis because they typically used a different response variable.;)

No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Disadvantageous inequity aversion (IA), a negative response to receiving less than others, is a key building block of the human sense of fairness. While some theorize that IA is shared by species acro...

No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a #meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
New paper led by Oded Ritov and w/ @nicholaraihani.bsky.social and Jan Engelmann.

1/13 Goffins in the gym

Goffin's cockatoos choose and transport lighter objects in a “weight training” that has helped us reveal their amazing decision-making skills.

(paper) https://buff.ly/4hRMvyz by @celestineadelmant.bsky.social

Motivated by all these other animal-centric starter packs to fill in another niche: comparative cognition!
go.bsky.app/5yu5SDr
Let me know if you want to be added, or know someone who ought to be in the pack. Would be great to have representation from loads of species and places.

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD in Animal Cognition / Developmental Psychology, see below. Deadline approaching soon..

Domain-specific inferences about conspecifics’ skills by chimpanzees Scientific Reports - Domain-specific inferences about conspecifics’ skills by chimpanzees

Happy to share our recent paper on chimpanzees’ evaluations of conspecifics’ skills rdcu.be/dUPCS

Big Thanks to the team of Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary for their fantastic support!

Here we go - PhD position #2

Development of social cognition across cultures 🇰🇪🇹🇷🇩🇪

* Comparative longitudinal project
* Focus on individual differences
* Fully funded for 4 years (75% E13, teaching optional)

@volkswagenstiftung.bsky.social

more info👇

www.leuphana.de/en/universit...

Here we go - PhD position #1

Development of language and pragmatics across cultures 🇰🇪🇹🇷🇩🇪

* Comparative longitudinal project
* Focus on individual differences
* Fully funded for 4 years (75% E13, teaching optional)

@volkswagenstiftung.bsky.social

more info👇

www.leuphana.de/en/universit...

Dog on a chin rest in an eye-tracking study.

Join us! We are seeking applicants for a fully funded 3-y PhD project on dogs’ and infants' causal perception using #eyetracking and #pupillometry, based at Vetmeduni Vienna and in collaboration with @jfkominsky.bsky.social at CEU.
Full info here: share.eva.mpg.de/index.php/s/...

Infants evaluate informativeness of evidence and predict causal events as revealed in theta oscillations and predictive looking - Communications Psychology 16-month-old infants showed heightened theta oscillations for informative versus uninformative causal evidence. This relationship was more pronounced in infants who subsequently made correct predictio...

New paper is out! Led by Katarina Begus, we explored 16m olds reasoning. Infant's theta response discerned between predicted confounded & uncon events, suggesting that infants can strategically direct attention to events that are likely to reveal informative evidence.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

📢 Job alert: My department is advertising *two* permanent Lectureships in any area of psychology (including Origins of Mind) @ Univ of St Andrews, UK. Please circulate! #PsychSciSky #Psychology #AcademicSky #EHBEA @eslr.bsky.social

Deadline: 06/09/24 www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/I/...