Cat Hobaiter

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Image shows just two example headlines from prominent media outlets earlier this week, heralding a newly published discovery that supposedly "rewrites human evolution". Left side, from the BBC: "Million-year-old skull rewrites human evolution, scientists claim"; right side, from the New York Post: "1M-year-old skull discovery could change everything we know about human evolution".

New analysis of a 1-million yr old fossil skull captured worldwide media attention this week, with many headlines saying it requires a complete rewrite/rethink of human evolution. This is an intriguing study & it's brilliant to see so much public enthusiasm for deciphering our origins, but....1/n 🧪

Job Alert!

Come and join our team at our field site CRP Simenti in Senegal. Julia Fischer @julxf.bsky.social (@primatenzentrum.bsky.social) is recruiting a #Research_Manager. Work with the wonderful lovely Guinea baboons and manage our long-term data collection.

👉 www.dpz.eu/karriere/ste...

Only a bit more than 1 Week remaining to apply for this #multispecies #archaeology position with amazing people such as @nakedprimate.bsky.social and myself 👇

Post-Doctral Researcher (100%, 3 years)
🏺🐒🐻‍❄️🦥

Three large colourful duffels stacked inside each other

I present the duffel-in-duffel-in-duffel #turduffen !! A useful way to consolidate & segregate dirty but wearable clothes (protect at all costs chicken) from ‘field’ dirty (salvageable duck) from good god the smell (maybe we should burn it turkey) ☠️🧪

#fieldwork #gonechimping @mbchimp.bsky.social

Cognitive scientists and AI researchers make a forceful call to reject “uncritical adoption" of AI in academia A new paper calls on academia to repel rampant AI in university departments and classrooms.

With students heading back to the classroom, a group of cognitive scientists and AI researchers has published one of the most forceful and evidence-backed calls yet to reject the "uncritical adoption of AI" in academia:

Opinion | We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself

“We will never know what diseases might have been cured or what advances in technology might have been invented had the lights not gone out in the labs.”
🧪 #giftarticle

The shadow of a man in the darkness walks through a puddle of light in shoulder high grass

The trail in & out of camp is an old way b/w villages, walked for generations, deeply familiar but reworked anew each walking. Last night after fording the flooded river, dog tired, soaking wet, well past dark, we climbed up to the village under a lunar eclipse. Glad I get to carry this version 💚🧪

You get to tame the great and powerful rain dragon and win the everlasting appreciation of all other (non frog) beings!

A black and white photo of a machete stuck standing vertically into a muddy forest floor

Forget the sword in the stone, here @mbchimp.bsky.social
it’s the machete in the mud that’s the rainy season hero! 😂

#fieldwork #gonechimping #moyenbafing #guinea #dontforgetyourmachete 🧪

I find the pointed finger of shame works remarkably well across species - and the, I’m not angry I’m just disappointed sigh..

A silvery tree frog with gold flecked eyes clings to a small branch

At least the #frogs of the #moyenbafing are living their absolute noisiest #rainyseason #bestlife 🛁🐸🧪

#fieldwork #gonechimping #guinea #maketherainstop #glowup @mbchimp.bsky.social

Black and white photo of a small snake in bamboo rafters

Pleased to report that new roomie & I getting along just fine after coming to some basic agreements about no-no spaces (boots, bedroll) and yes-please activities (eating large invertebrates)..

#fieldwork #herp #moyenbafing #guinea #gonechimping @mbchimp.bsky.social 🧪

a cat taking a bath with a caption that says can you tell i 'm enjoying this Alt: a cat taking a bath with a caption that says can you tell i 'm enjoying this

managed the unthinkable wet-season luxury of sunny late afternoon& got both socks & boots 85% dry.. the warm cosy feeling of 6am smugness walking in clearly alerted the fieldwork gods to this unacceptable fact, who placed a tiny extra slippery spot on the log we use to cross the v full river 🛁🙄🧪

I am looking for a multispecies archaeologist with a strong theoretical and interpretive profile to join my group (100%, 3 years): uni.koeln/2E7CR

Deadline: 30.09.2025.
Apply here: uni.koeln/ZQMKA ("Wiss2508-21")

@nakedprimate.bsky.social @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social @unicologne.bsky.social

A large very hairy stripped orange caterpillar curled up asleep on stones

Fieldwork lessons : we do not touch the sleepy hairy pretty ones… both because it would be impolite to wake them from their sweet reveries, and because it would hurt like a mo-fo.. 😳

#fieldwork #caterpillars #guinea @mbchimp.bsky.social
#gonechimping 🧪

The base of a very chonky folded baobab tree trunk

I like Bay-oh babs, and I can not lie…

#baobab #Guinea #moyenbafing #fieldwork #gonechimping 🧪
@mbchimp.bsky.social

A road - now a river - on way into the park

A river - now a road - on a chimp habituation morning

Baby monitor lizard in a river was a road..

Good people of Bluesky.. it’s time for the classic rainy season fieldwork game of : river-or-road?! @mbchimp.bsky.social 😂⛈️

with bonus new was-road-now-river friend 💚

#fieldwork #rainyseason #gonechimping #guinea 🧪 #moyenbafing

It is with a very heavy heart that we share the loss of a friend, colleague, mentor and leader in primate conservation, Prof. Augustin Basabose. We wish to extend our deepest and most sincere condolences to his family and to all who ever had the privilege and chance to know him.

ZOOGESTURES has a web presence now! 🐒🦥🐻‍❄️

zoogestures.uni-koeln.de

with @nakedprimate.bsky.social @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social

🏺🗃️📕

A grainy black and white photo of heavy rain on a street as people walk through the water

Go figure that on the Micronesia-Scotland-Guinea turn around, Scotland was the only place it didn’t rain on me everyday 😂 #rainyseason #fieldwork #Conakry #gonechimping

A caveman points at a picture of a dinosaur tail spikes and calls them thagomizers

So many good ones!! This one’s a personal favourite mostly because the dino science peeps saw it and decided, yeah… that sounds about right.. and now the caudal spikes of stegasaurids are technically termed thagomizers 🤓

Single-panel cartoon drawn by Gary Larson. Standing in the street is a bearded man with glasses, white coat and a clipboard. He is wearing a helmet with flashing coloured buttons and multiple different types of antennae. In the street there are also several dogs, including one rearing up at a fence and another chasing a car. Speech bubbles show the dogs are saying "Hey! Hey! Hey!", "Heyyyyyyy", and "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!". Caption underneath: Donning his new canine decoder, Professor Schwartzman becomes the first human being on Earth to hear what barking dogs are actually saying.

Happy Birthday Gary Larson, 75 years old today. A perfect excuse to celebrate his tireless efforts documenting major breakthroughs in science, including this pivotal moment for language research:

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview.
cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

3 large duffles stacked on top of each other

First we pile, then we pack, then we pile.. it’s the ciiiiircle of (field)life 😂

#fieldwork #guinea @mbchimp.bsky.social #gonechimping 🧪

The #IsleofWight is a world famous dinosaur hotspot... and it's desperately in need of a new museum and Science Park. Help us by signing the petition (either via the QR or at chng.it/4CXPhKLQs2). Watch out for news in the coming weeks :) #dinosaurs

Our ape ancestors’ taste for fermenting fruit may have paved a boozy evolutionary path Eating fallen fruit—or “scrumping”—plays a bigger part in many apes’ diets than scientists realized

A new study adds support to the so-called “drunken monkey” hypothesis by examining just how often living apes indulge in fallen—presumably boozy—fruits. scim.ag/3UoyyO3

A white hand holding a metal compass in a forest

Do I take my ADHD meds to the field? What to put in a risk assessment w dyspraxia? How do I support ND students during fieldschool?

If you ever wondered what fieldwork's like as a neurodivergent ecologist, this webinar by the @britishecologicalsociety.org is for you!
tinyurl.com/yckyrf4r

Scrumping of Pentadesma butyracea (Clusiaceae) by a western gorilla.

Gothic monkeys as the embodiment of curiosity and temptation. Top left: a column statue, Cathédrale de Chartres. At left, Fortitude stabs a lion (inscription crudelitas, “cruelty”); at right, Justice conquers a monkey (inscription curiositas, “curiosity”). Photograph: Jane Vadnal. Bottom left: a bronze plaquette with gilding titled Adam and Eve, dated 1514 by Ludwig Krug. Photograph: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Right: panel painting titled Earthly Paradise with the Fall of Man, dated 1615 by Peter Paul Rubens (the figures) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (the flora and fauna, including two monkeys resembling Cercocebus torquatus on the left and Cercopithecus petaurista on the right).

"Scrumping" describes the behavior of primates consuming overripe, fermented fruit. Studying this behavior may help us better understand the evolution of human alcohol tolerance! 🧪

academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Do elephants make deliberate gestures to ask for things? Our study says yes Elephants were found to gesture intentionally when they wanted humans to give them apples. This trait was thought to exist mainly in primates.

Happy to share this article on @theconversation.com covering our study on elephant gestures 🐘👋 @angelastoeger.bsky.social @nakedprimate.bsky.social Lucy Bates, Josh Plotnik

theconversation.com/do-elephants...