Iain Couzin

🦍 Camera-trap footage of chimpanzees & gorillas (PanAf500)

We pushed FERAL to handle multi-species, multi-behavior field recordings: day and night, dense vegetation, variable lighting.
FERAL achieves strong accuracy even for visually rare but distinct behaviors like climbing up/down.

I think this tool is so powerful and so simple that it will transform behavioral research.

Collective behaviour researcher @icouzin.bsky.social from #UniKonstanz and @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social was recognized - once again - as “Global Highly Cited Researcher” 2025. The pioneer in collective behaviour research is named among the world’s most influential scientists. t1p.de/7g6kl

Collective intelligence in animals and robots - Nature Communications This commentary explores how collective intelligence arises from local interactions in animal groups and how these principles inform the design of swarm robotic systems, addressing the challenge of ac...

Comment by Prof @icouzin.bsky.social that explores how collective intelligence emerges from local interactions in animal groups, and how these principles inform the design of swarm robotic systems. @natureportfolio.nature.com
@natcomms.nature.com #robotics
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Examples of some recent papers from graduate students in my group - a full list of recent papers and preprints can be found here (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=pTdxVdIAAAAJ) and profile of the group here: https://egioxford.web.ox.ac.uk/members

The annual Wytham Field Team Photo!

Celebrating a successful field season with great food & good company - May 2025

Front view of the Life & Mind Building, which opened in Oct 2025: The new home of Biology at Oxford

Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky With an eye toward realism, the neuroscientist, who has a new study about bats out today, creates microcosms of the natural world to understand animal behavior.

Naturalistic approaches such as Ulanovsky’s open up “potential opportunities to really reveal why the brain is structured in the way it’s structured,” says Iain Couzin.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...

New study from #UniKonstanz @cbehav.bsky.social and @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social shows: animal swarms don’t need to follow fixed rules; their coordination emerges from brain dynamics. Flexible “ring attractor” networks create complexity from simplicity: https://t1p.de/4c6cd @icouzin.bsky.social

We had the pleasure of awarding the Fyssen International Prize last June to two outstanding laureates — Prof. Jean-Louis Deneubourg and @icouzin.bsky.social Prof. Iain Couzin — in recognition of the excellence of their work on the theme "Collective behavior across species".

It’s the New Fellows Seminar Day - incredible talks in an inspiring venue. I love the motto of the Royal Society: “Nullius in verba”
“Take nobody’s word for it” -
don’t just believe something because someone says so—find out for yourself.

Spent a fantastic week in Konstanz visiting @icouzin.bsky.social and having so many discussions about collective behavior in *everything*.

Foto eines Heuschreckenschwarms auf dem Boden, mit Tieren vorne in Nahaufnahme. Darüber Überschrift "Wenn Heuschrecken füreinander schwärmen" und Autorinnenname "Larissa Tetsch" des im Post verlinkten Artikels. Unter dem Foto dessen Vorspann und erste Textzeilen.

Heuschreckenschwärme sind Wunder der Koordination. Wie sich die einzelnen Tiere im #Schwarm orientieren, können @icouzin.bsky.social et al. vom @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social und @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de) jetzt annähernd erklären: www.laborjournal.de/rubric/journ... (von Larissa Tetsch)

From humans to swarm intelligence, what is the impact of uninformed individuals on collective decisions? Check this comment in @science.org by @kenjennings.bsky.social and @carlbergstrom.com on @icouzin.bsky.social et al's paper cdanfort.w3.uvm.edu/csc-reading-...

I’m thrilled to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. What an honour! Would not have happened without the mentors, postdocs and students who I’ve had the great privilege to learn and collaborate with throughout my career. @uni-konstanz.de @maxplanck.de

Reverse engineering the control law for schooling in zebrafish using virtual reality Reverse engineering the control law used by schooling fish provides an effective and robust algorithm for robotic pursuit.

Liang Li and team have developed a VR system for fish to decipher how they school. The team uncovered the natural ‘control law’ used by zebrafish to coordinate behavior with others.

@icouzin.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de @cbehav.bsky.social

Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New episode 🎧 We discuss Geometric Decision-Making with @icouzin.bsky.social! We go over the collective behaviours seen in different animals 🐠🪰🐙and ask: how much do physics models ⚛️portray the dynamics of collective-decision-making? Listen to learn more! open.spotify.com/show/4GrM2vL...

‘Natural Neuroscience,’ an excerpt In his new book, Nachum Ulanovsky calls on the field to embrace naturalistic conditions and move away from overcontrolled experiments.

In his new book, published today, Nachum Ulanovsky calls on the field to embrace naturalistic conditions and move away from overcontrolled experiments.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

Tissue-like multicellular development triggered by mechanical compression in archaea The advent of clonal multicellularity is a critical evolutionary milestone, seen often in eukaryotes, rarely in bacteria, and only once in archaea. We show that uniaxial compression induces clonal mul...

Pretty much everything is fucked, but here is some beautiful and exciting science from @archaeon-alex.bsky.social and colleagues.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This photograph shows a female standard fancy rat—a domesticated variant for the pet trade. That rats make good pets is not surprising when considering the long history of their close associations with humans. Although brown and black "wild" rats do spread some infectious diseases, we have recently learned about more-positive attributes, including quite how adept, adaptable, and even fun-loving they are.

A special issue of Science explores the complex and close associations rats share with humans—from their ubiquity in the human environment to their crucial role as biomedical models.

🐀 Learn more on #WorldRatDay: scim.ag/3E7Xo04

🌍 We are launching a new #ManyLabs!!! Join the Heat & Cognition project! We're studying how extreme heat affects human thinking, social behavior & well-being — globally.
Contribute & co-author:
🔗 Info: heatandmind.wordpress.com
📋 Sign up: www.soscisurvey.de/HeatandCogni...
#EnvironmentalPsychology

We use multi-sensor field studies, swarm robotics and computational modelling to understand the 'what', 'how' and hopefully the 'why' of it all. Tagging our collaborators @swarmdynamics.bsky.social @joefresna.bsky.social @icouzin.bsky.social & Kalle Åström at Uni. Lund 3/n

Kicking off the UK Multi-Agent Systems Symposium 2025 (UK-MAS) by The Alan Turing Institute!

Opening with @icouzin.bsky.social from @cbehav.bsky.social on "The Geometry of Collective Multi-Agent Decision Making."

Exciting day of #collective #behavior across scales.

👾🤖🦠🦈🖥️🏦

Correlative light and electron microscopy reveals the fine circuit structure underlying evidence accumulation in larval zebrafish Accumulating information is a critical component of most circuit computations in the brain across species, yet its precise implementation at the synaptic level remains poorly understood. Dissecting su...

We are proud to present our new preprint “Correlative light and electron microscopy reveals the fine circuit structure underlying evidence accumulation in larval zebrafish”, just posted on bioRxiv (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...). (1/10)

Thank you all for the opportunity to talk about insect swarms, and for the President’s Medal. Lovely to see so many friends from over the years there!

The 2025 Verrall Lecture will be given by Professor Iain Couzin, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour.

📢 It's tomorrow!

The 2025 #VerrallLecture will be given by Professor @icouzin.bsky.social, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social.

The Lecture takes place Wed 5 March. The talk will be recorded & shared after the event 🔽
buff.ly/4hJ9BGz

Macro photo taken across a crowd of angry black ants, their eyeless heads raised towards the sky with scythe-shaped jaws open.

Thinking of starting a new religion

The final keynote speaker of #cultureconference2025 is Michael Chimento, with his work on methods and models of ephemeral animal cultures 🐦

@cultconf.bsky.social @mchimento.bsky.social

More cool work from the “Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour” @cbehav.bsky.social at the University of Konstanz.

London folk - I’m giving a public lecture on Wed “From Democratic Consensus to Cannibalistic Hordes: The Remarkable World of Insect Swarms” - Come along!