Cat Hobaiter

Photo through the windscreen of sunrise through the dust cloud of the truck in front

Looks like the dry season has started… 😷😂

#eatdust #gonechimping @mbchimp.bsky.social 🧪

🚨It’s publication day!🚨

My book OCCUPIED REFUGE is officially OUT today with Duke University Press. Available to order from all book shops!

Upcoming book launches in Glasgow, Oxford, Nairobi and—perhaps—a city near you!

Read the introduction for free online: www.dukeupress.edu/occupied-ref...

how cute is this?! Can't believe I get to see these guys already next month... 😍

Last week to apply! Don't miss this chance ✨

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

A young chimpanzee in Guinea consumes the tasty flowers of a Bombax tree

🌸 Flower season continues in Moyen Bafing! Today’s highlight: a young chimp delicately snacking on Bombax flowers. These weeks in the PNMB are pure magic ✨

Group photograph of faculty and participants of the very first Cold Spring Harbor summer course on Genetics and Neurobiology of Language in 2014, taken as the sun was going down at the Banbury Campus, Lloyd Harbor.

Please tell friends & colleagues about our unique course “Genetics & Neurobiology of Language” July 27-Aug 3 2026. Expert tutors, interactive talks, panel discussions, all in a beautiful setting. Scholarships available: meetings.cshl.edu/courses.aspx...
@cshlnews.bsky.social @cshlbanbury.bsky.social

Has any linguist looked into the NXIVM cult's language acquisition experiments?

Babies were systematically exposed to up to 9 languages. Allegedly, they ended up speaking gibberish.

(Quotes from Sally Denton's 2022 book "The Colony.")

#LangSky #Linguistics

The late philosopher Daniel Dennett had a notable penchant for metaphor—but he rarely used just one. Instead, he often engaged in what @sflusberg.bsky.social calls "metaphorical triangulation."

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode!

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

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

A Tom Gould cartoon, "Reworking my primate feeding study due to budget restrictions". On the left side is a schematic labeled "original version" with symbols for motion-activated cameras, 1000km2 of tropical forest, mountain gorilla, monkey, fruit tree. On the right is the same schematic, labeled "new version" with the symbols labeled motion-activated camera, kitchen, spouse, offspring, biscuit tin

I'm sure this is a funnier @tomgauld.bsky.social cartoon for people who are not former primatologists who spent the morning looking at birds in the snow just to get the "I am watching an animal in a tree through binoculars" rush again.

We can all agree that metaphors are nice. But are they also sometimes necessary? Could there be ideas we simply can't approach literally, thoughts we can't think without metaphors?

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

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

Thrilled that our elephant gesture work got featured in the latest National Geographic PhotoArk edition @natgeophotos.bsky.social @angelastoeger.bsky.social @nakedprimate.bsky.social. Photo Ark uses the power of photography to inspire people to help protect at-risk species before it’s too late.

Swap Distance Minimization Beyond Entropy Minimization in Word Order Variation Consider a linguistic structure formed by n elements, for instance, subject, directobject and verb (n=3) or subject, direct object, indirect object and verb (n=4). We investigate whether the freque...

An underexplored word order principle, swap distance minimization, constrains word variation even after controlling for the actual word order diversity.
Joint work with @hectobreak.bsky.social and Arnau Martí Llobet
Free <50 copies
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y6CPR...

I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.

Great piece on prioritizing quality over quantity in scientific publication.

For those of us with labs, this necessarily involves shrinking our group size. After I got tenure I started to downsize my lab and have not regretted it one iota. More time for each student & more time to think & write.

A tarantula lifts several legs while army ants move on the ground - black and white shot

Gotta keep some of those eight legs up out the way when the safari ants are marauding…

#bugomaprimates #bugomaforest #notachimp #tarantula #furryfriend 🧪

After reviewing nearly 200 applications from prospective grad students and postdocs over the past few months for a couple different 🧪⚒️ postings, here are some tips, at least as they apply to North American positions. I hope they help future applicants. Share with your networks. 🧵

The flexible, the stereotyped and the in‐between: putting together the combinatory tool use origins hypothesis Tool use research has long made the distinction between tool using that is considered learned and flexible, and that which appears to be instinctive and stereotyped. However, animals with an inherite...

I had the honour of working to bring @auersperga.bsky.social’s baby to life. It’s a VERY heavy baby - over 200 references (and yes I read them all) - but necessary to do justice to our new hypothesis of combinatory tool use origins 📝👶🛠️

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

ASAB Important Upcoming Dates. ASAB Spring Conference 2026 (logo of gorilla with baby on back) Bristol 23rd-25th March. Feb 1: Conference travel grants due Feb 1: Abstracts due Feb 19: Registration ends Animal Behaviour in the Anthropocene ECBB 2025 (logo of various animals in a reflected city). Cambridge 1st-4th September. Jan 31: Symposia submission deadline March 14: Abstracts due March 31: Early bird registration ends April 1: Developing country travel grants due June 1: Conference travel grants due

Take note! 📝 There are a lot of important dates coming up for #ASABSpring2026 and #ECBB2026 🗓️

More information here: www.asab.org/conferences-...

Fireflies twinkle in a dark forest evening

fieldwork fairylights 💚💚💚 Happy Chimpmas Eve everyone!
🧪🐵

Had fun with this one!

In which I discuss: dolphins, elephants, marmosets, teknonymy, necronymy, reciprocal names in New Guinea, nominative determinism, the Bob-Kirk effect, the face-name-matching effect, name signs, toponyms, dog names, name uniqueness, alexinomia, toponyms, name taboos, etc.

A brown freckled faced adult male chimpanzee sits in dark dense leafy undergrowth

just above the equator #wintersolstice is technically still the shortest day in #bugomaforest, but didn’t feel like it on a 13hr follow, light scrumping, rain dancing, shout at northern neighbours & a slow peaceful settling into the nest for well deserved sleep… not a bad welcome back furry fam 💚 🧪

Merry Christmas!! This Christmas, give the gift of hope. Your donation helps the Animal Behavior Collective ensure more students receive the resources they need to learn, grow, and thrive. Donate!

Wishing everyone a joyful holiday season ❄️🎄⛄
At @abcmicrogrants.bsky.social 🐝🐝🐝, we’re excited to support even more #AnimalBehavior students through #microgrants + #mentorship. Your generosity makes this possible - consider donating to help us keep this work going!

Linguaphile Magazine We are a non-profit magazine exploring the essence of languages and the cultures they shape. From endangered dialects to the global impact of multilingualism, we delve into the stories behind the worl...

Linguaphile Magazine is crowdfunding printing for their first physical edition. It looks very beautiful.

www.linguaphilemagazine.org

This project received a 2024 #lingcomm grant commendation, it's exciting to see this turn into a physical product!

ASAB spring conference 2026 logo with gorilla

If you’re sad #ASABWinter2025 is over, have no fear! #ASABSpring2025 🌼 is coming soon, from March 23-25 at Bristol University. It’s an especially fantastic meeting for students and ECRs 🤠

Don’t forget travel grants are due Feb 1!

www.asab.org/conferences-...

A brief natural history of misinformation Abstract. The idea that organisms benefit by acquiring information through social connections is a cornerstone of our understanding of social evolution and

"misinformation is widespread in biological systems spanning levels of organization, and [...] is probably an inevitable property that inherits from fundamental constraints on biological communication systems, rather than a pathology"
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. I'm calm. I'm calm. I promise.

I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.

Attending #ASABWinter2025 this coming week? Feel free to stop by my poster and check out how we used novel visual field estimations for freely-flying hawkmoths to investigate lateralized sensorimotor control! Excited to share the results from the past two years of work 🦋👁️👅🦾 and happy to chat!

Overview | EHBEA2026 The upcoming conference of the European Human Behaviour & Evolution Association will take place in Leiden, The Netherlands, 14th-17th of April 2026. EHBEA conferences bring together researchers applyi...

We have already received many wonderful abstracts, thank you all! 🌟
For those who need a little extra time, we have good news: the #EHBEA2026 deadline has been extended to 9 Jan. ✍️✨
Add the finishing touches, hit submit, and join an exciting, inspiring conference!
👉 www.ehbea2026.com

The deadline for abstracts for the 2026 European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association has been extended to 9 January 👇