Kiran Basava

Nice thread to balance things out! There are good researchers doing the hard work to treat evolutionary hypotheses of human psychology with the seriousness and rigor they deserve. Testing assumptions and, if necessary, shedding zombie theories is how a field progresses and improves

The Diversity and Evolution of Vocal Communication in Nonavian Reptiles Historically, research on nonavian reptile communication has emphasized visual, tactile, and chemical modalities. Recently, growing evidence highlights the significance of acoustic signals in intra- a...

I am happy to present to you our review „The diversity and evolution of vocal communication in nonavian reptiles“, published @annualreviews.bsky.social Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. Huge thanks to @gabrieljcohen.bsky.social and my other co-authors! Must say, I am a bit proud of Figure 1. ….

We must change this mindset that the essential and most critical work in a field is always the first one. That distorted view has caused a lot of problems in psychological science already. The first work is just that—the start. Every field should be evaluated based on the complete body of evidence.

University 'Compact' Tracker

If you want to know the latest on the government's 'compact' (i.e. extortion) offer to universities, you can use this tracker. Feel free to suggest edits as well. #academia
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

The superpower of books like Sapiens is that they require expertise in like 12 academic fields to debunk. So you get these super detailed takedowns of small sections that look to laypeople like nitpicking.

Graphical abstract for A history of human thought on brain injury in head-hitting animals. Humans have hypothesized about headbutting for centuries. Biological misunderstanding has often been the cause of "invulnerability" theories. An accumulation of biological misinterpretation has led to the belief that animals are immune, despite evidence that headbutting causes brain injury.

Violence, scientific DRAMA, and misunderstanding!
Who first asked if woodpeckers get headaches, or if rams are immune to brain damage?
New Paper! I trace the history of human thought on brain injury in head-hitting animals, and it's a wild ride. 🧪 🏺
A thread - 1/🧵
doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

There are also misconceptions about what religious-studies courses teach. “I get multiple reactions to what I do,” said Shaily Patel, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. “One is, Oh you’re teaching people theology, which is not what I do. The other is, That’s not a thing that’s worth learning about, because people perceive religion to be esoteric.”

The academic study of Religion also remains misunderstood as @vox-magica.bsky.social notes—whether because of its common misinterpretation as theological or the sense that it’s arcane +

“Counting majors does not reflect the value religious studies brings to a college, its proponents and practitioners say. Courses in religion are popular among undergraduates because they learn, often for the first time, about religion as something to study rather than to practice. Now that is more important than ever, some in the discipline say.”

A lot of the justifications point to the number of Religious Studies majors—but is this really how a dept’s value should be judged? In many RS departments in which I’ve taught, our courses have enormous enrollments & student interest +

Really happy to share this article I'm grateful to have been a part of: 'Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience' coauthored with @kevinlala.bsky.social, @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social and Marcus Feldman. Check out a preprint here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
#ScientificRacism #Antiracism

part of the issue may be that when people say ‘the humanities’, or my personal favorite, ‘the humanities and social sciences’ they could be referring to any of 53982 things that have very little to do with each other

I admit that I do not fully grasp what the knowledge of an ongoing genocide demands of me, but I think if I were not bothered by that question—if I batted it away, like a gnat—it could only be because something essential and irreplaceable had absented itself from my soul.

This is still early stages and we’re seeking feedback from animal behavior researchers on how to make future versions most useful for comparative research. Please take a look and get in touch! (5/5)

Current version has 133 behaviors for 62 species, mostly mammals + birds. Our focus now is expanding this sample, filling out missing data, and standardizing/quantifying variables (4/5)

Web app for the database: datadiversitylab.github.io/ACDB/
(3/5)

This includes taxonomic info and IUCN status; descriptions of behaviors, how they’re socially transmitted, and category (e.g. communication, foraging, migration, etc…); and a map of populations and behaviors (2/5)

Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database - Scientific Data Scientific Data - Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database

Happy to share our new paper introducing the Animal Culture Database in Scientific Data: We’re putting together a resource consolidating primary research on cultural behaviors in wild animal populations and how they’re affected by human activity (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1925

New theme issue in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B @royalsocietypublishing.org:

Animal culture: conservation in a changing world

Edited by @pbrakes.bsky.social, @lucymaplin.bsky.social, @emma-carroll.bsky.social, Alison L Greggor, Andrew Whiten and @ellengarland.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1098/rstb...

“Protecting the living cultural landscapes of animal stone-tool-use sites involves preserving the environments where these behaviors occur and recognizing the intrinsic value of animal cultures” 🏺🧪🐒

Inside me there are two wolves. One of them has a 15 genome edits the other 20 genome edits. Neither of them is a dire wolf.

I cannot imagine an ecologist saying "I'm going to start a genomics project, I don't know anything about DNA but how hard can it be?" You'd ask someone who knew. You'd learn.

You should do the same for social science research! Obviously!

We would love feedback on a new NCBI-BLAST service we are launching today: sky-blast.com

Under the hood it's the same BLAST executable and databases provided by NCBI, with a replica of the NIH's interface - providing an alternative to the US gov service that's less congested, faster & more reliable

The demographic drivers of cultural evolution in bird song Social learning can give rise to shared behavioral patterns that persist as culture within animal communities,1,2 such as bird and whale songs and cet…

New paper on the demographic drivers of cultural evolution in Great Tit song published today - epic work led by @nilomr.bsky.social with help from @andreaestandia.bsky.social Ella Cole & Sara Keen. Why did we do this, and what did we find? 🧵 follows: 1/n
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

CES offers its full support to the Stand Up For Science rallies in the U.S. on March 7 2025.

Apparently the doi doesn't work for some people, so here's the full link: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... ☺️

Language-like efficiency in whale communication Whale vocalizations follow efficiency rules seen in human language, revealing striking similarities in communication systems.

Do whales optimize their vocalizations for efficiency, just like human language? 🐋🎶 My latest study in
Science Advances (@science.org) suggests they do—following linguistic laws seen in human speech. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Tips for preserving websites Save the websites to the Wayback Machine. The easiest way to do this is by installing the Wayback Machine extension for your browser. The add-ons and extensions are listed on the left-hand panel of the website’s homepage. To find the missing websites, go to Wayback Machine and type in the website’s URL in the search bar. If you’re concerned that certain websites or web pages may be removed, you can suggest federal websites and content that end in .gov, .mil and .com to the End of Term Web Archive. You can suggest federal climate and environmental databases to Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. You can suggest databases to The Data Liberation Project, which is run by MuckRock and Big Local News. Tell science journalist Maggie Koerth what CDC data you've downloaded and whether you've made them publicly available.

Tips for preserving websites:

📣📣📣

Applications for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!!

Are you interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply!

More info: disi.org

Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review Vocal communication is broadly distributed in a wide range of nonhuman animal species and is hypothesized to play an important role in mate attraction…

Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... In our new paper we review 130 papers and summarise empirical evidence for socioecological factors affecting vocal communication, as well as evidence for vocal learning in different corvid species.