Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute #DISI

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 preprint out!🧪🌍🔥

I observed 17 bird species at two prescribed fires in Sweden. They appeared to mostly ignore the fire, and some (such as this skylark) even sang through the smoke - an important comparison with birds from fire-prone regions (reviewed here).

www.authorea.com/users/102018...

Cow Tools!

We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years.
We breed them and exploit them

It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS

Here I describe our study

(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social
with @auersperga.bsky.social

1/7 Look, Mom, no hands!

They have studied the age at which chimpanzees take the most risks (jumping and doing crazy things from tree to tree). It turns out that they have a peak in childhood, and it decreases as they grow older. This tells us something very interesting about ourselves.

IQ is a fraught concept, to say the least. Many regard it with squeamishness or outright disdain. Yet it's also one of the most researched constructs in all of psychology. How should we think about it?

From the archive, our interview with @ent3c.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/how-should-w...

On Evaluating Cognitive Capabilities in Machines (and Other "Alien" Intelligences) (Apologies for the length of this post, which means it gets cut off in the email version.

My latest on Substack -- a write-up of the talk I gave at NeurIPS in December.

aiguide.substack.com/p/on-evaluat...

A new academic term is ramping up. Have you considered putting our episodes on your syllabi?

Conversations offer an accessible and engaging format—your students will thank you! We have 100+ episodes to choose from, covering many forms of mind from all disciplinary angles.

disi.org/manyminds/

Animal Consciousness (first paragraph of the article). First published Sat Dec 23, 1995; substantive revision Tue Jan 13, 2026. Is there something it’s like to be an octopus, a bee, a snail? For much of the twentieth century, research into animal cognition tended to avoid questions of consciousness, following the lead of human neuroscience, where such questions were also marginalized (see the entries on animal cognition, methods in comparative cognition). However, the growing profile of consciousness science since 2000 has brought the topic of consciousness back into the scientific mainstream (see the entry on the neuroscience of consciousness), and this has led to resurgent interest in studying conscious experience in other animals.

I've been working for ages on a comprehensive revamp of the Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on "Animal Consciousness", with new sections on non-Western perspectives, methodological challenges and evolutionary big pictures, and it's out today: plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons.... Hope you find it useful!

There's a commonsense view of human names—of where they come from and what they're for—that's guiding our search for names in animals. Could it be leading us astray?

Discussed in our latest episode, an essay from @kensycoop.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/in-search-of...

Excited this piece is finally out in Philosophy of Science. We argue that, paradoxically, we can have certainty about theorems in math, the proofs of which we can never understand. That's weird and tells us something important about why we do math in the first place #philsky tinyurl.com/3dxxb98a

Can the Brain Understand Itself? Scientist and historian Matthew Cobb explores the limits of neuroscience.

Happy new year!! 🎉

As we pause before our 2026 run, we're sharing an episode from our friends at 'On Humans' @ilarimakela.bsky.social! It's a conversation with biologist & historian @matthewcobb.bsky.social about our understanding of the brain.

Listen or read: onhumans.substack.com/p/can-the-br...

Thrilled to see this paper out, two years after starting our collaboration at @divintelligence.bsky.social

🚨Excited to share our new theoretical framework to classify and spark mechanistic inquiries into various forms of collective intelligence!

Soon to be published in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social

Thanks to @divintelligence.bsky.social

Thread by Cody Moser @culturologies.co 👇🏽

New episode!! 🎉🎙️

An audio essay from @kensycoop.bsky.social about names in the natural world.

The search for "name-like" symbols in animals is intensifying. But if the enterprise is to succeed, we first need to pause and ask ourselves: What even is a name?

Listen: disi.org/in-search-of...

Why Do Humans Have Linguistic Intuition? | Cadernos de Linguística

Why do humans have linguistic intuition? And why should you care?

A short thread about my new paper in @cadlin.bsky.social

This work has the most original insight I've ever had, a genuinely new idea about the nature of language

cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca...

1/20

Excited to announce a new book telling the story of mathematical approaches to studying the mind, from the origins of cognitive science to modern AI! The Laws of Thought will be published in February and is available for pre-order now.

To survive and flourish, many animal species rely on ecological knowledge. But this knowledge is not always spread across the group—it's often held by certain "keystone individuals."

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @pbrakes.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/the-value-of...

Super proud of this paper with @apvelilla.bsky.social and @babeheim.bsky.social, now out in Psych Review.

Non-paywalled version (preprint) here: osf.io/preprints/so...

New episode!! 🎙️🎉

A chat w/ @pbrakes.bsky.social about animal cultures and animal conservation.

Culture was once thought to be uniquely human. No longer. We now know culture is found throughout the natural world. How does this complicate conservation?

Listen: disi.org/the-value-of...

🚨Job Alert plz RT!

Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!

We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals

Open-rank

apply.interfolio.com/178146

YouTube video by Global News Cameras capture BC sea wolf raiding crab traps in first possible ‘tool use’

Apparent case of learned tool use by wolves.

https://youtu.be/SiuQF68tdWI?si=k7DWNrI0y5jASt-o

#EvoBio #HPBio

YouTube video by LSE Philosophy Mazviita Chirimuuta (University of Edinburgh): Apocalyptic Technology: AI and the Limits of Science

🎥 Watch the Lakatos Award Lecture 2025 by Mazviita Chirimuuta on "Apocalyptic Technology: #AI and the Limits of #Science"

Mazviita Chirimuuta received the award for her book “The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KkX...

The sound of your uncle's laugh; an ice cream cone you had ten years ago. Why do we hold on to memories like these? Are they more than mere mental clutter?

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @aliboyle.bsky.social & @jomahr.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/what-is-memo...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️

A conversation with @aliboyle.bsky.social & @jomahr.bsky.social about the functions of memory.

We may not immediately think of memory as an evolutionary puzzle. But in certain respects—and from certain angles—it is quite puzzling indeed.

Listen: disi.org/what-is-memo...

I’m recruiting PhD students at NYU (start Sept 2026).
Focus: cultural evolution, innovation & cooperation, AI & society, progress studies & development.

Deadline to apply is Dec 1- very soon.

I’ll share more about the move & new work soon.

Please share with students & retweet!

The social origins of consciousness | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences We present the social origins of consciousness hypothesis, according to which the ability to coordinate with group members was the original adaptive function of consciousness. We offer three arguments...

Loved this paper by @kristinandrews.bsky.social and Noam Miller. A very convincing argument for the function of consciousness.

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?

A female wolf has been doing something unusual on the Central Coast of British Columbia. She's learned to pull crab traps up from the water, yanking on a rope to bring it to the surface. But is it tool use? Very fun story from @phiejacobs.bsky.social for @science.org

My main takeaway from this one:

Dog domestication is a singular "natural experiment" in brain evolution, one that we're just starting to understand. It's a bit bonkers more neuroscientists aren't working on it.

It was long thought that domestication leads to reductions in brain size. But as we understand dog brains better, the truth is proving more complicated—and more interesting.

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @erinhecht.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/of-breeds-an...

New episode!! 🎙️🎉

A conversation w/ @erinhecht.bsky.social about the diversity and evolution of canine brains.

We've lived and worked with dogs for 15,000+ years, sculpting their brains and bodies along the way. What can we learn from their singular story?

Listen: disi.org/of-breeds-an...