Brian Wood

Great bit of historical context.

Sex differences in health burdens across the lifespan in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) AbstractBackground and Objectives. Understanding health and aging in one of our closest relatives, wild chimpanzees, provides key insights into the evoluti

This study provides fundamental insights into aging, health burdens and sex differences of such in chimpanzees. Invaluable for understanding how humans evolved such long lives. health burdens across the lifespan in wild chimpanzees @apesemory.bsky.social academic.oup.com/emph/article...

Jolie, an adult female chimpanzee of the Ngogo community in Kibale National Park, Uganda, with sleeping infant son, Zawinul. CREDIT: Kevin Langergraber

After the Ngogo chimpanzee group killed 21 members of neighboring groups and expanded their territory by 22%, female birth rates more than doubled and infant survival increased sharply—showing clear fitness benefits from intergroup killing. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/TKmf50XuPjY

Going straight into my in-development “Cannibalism” lecture, warfare lectures, thank you

Yes. A split by half is a great idea. I've taught three seminars based on your book and for a variety of reasons, it was necessary to scale back approximately like this.

Female fertility and infant survivorship increase following lethal intergroup aggression and territorial expansion in wild chimpanzees | PNAS Lethal coalitionary intergroup aggression is a conspicuous aspect of wild chimpanzee behavior. Evidence indicates that such violence can lead to te...

In 2008, after killing many of their neighbors, Ngogo chimpanzees expanded their territory. Female fertility then doubled, and infant mortality plummeted. Adaptive violence in our ape cousins, documented in this new paper. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Nice post, uncle!

AI broke the college essay, and in-class writing is the new (old) way to go. Thus, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is key for grading student writing. I just compared the OCR output of the venerable Adobe Acrobat product to that of Gemini. Adobe is AWFUL. LLM problem, LLM solution.

RIP Jane Goodall. Two of the most inspirational books I've ever read are her works: "In the Shadow of Man" and "Chimpanzees of Gombe". Now teaching at UCLA, I honor her, her work, and what she stood for. Thank you Jane for a life so well lived, and for your example.

Maybe just maybe consider controlling for age? There are a host of other potential confounders and unmeasured factors to consider, in keeping with good scientific practice in #Sociology and the study of #Population

What an interesting study! Can’t wait to read it.

Well done Luke!

Cool article, written with a bit of attitude. If there is an upper limit, it must be higher than 150, but the loosey goosey way that “groups” are defined has always undercut this model for me.

Day one traveling in Tanzania right now, finding my ability to small talk politics with taxi drivers much harder than usual. Swahili primer for 2025.

What kind of network are we looking at here?

Matthew Wood To Voice H.E.R.B.I.E. In Marvel’s ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ One key character in The Fantastic Four: First Steps universe found its voice in sound editor and voice actor Matthew Wood.

Great casting! deadline.com/2025/05/matt...

If only this skull was found at the site it would be hard to make the case for Homo erectus, no?

Brilliant thread

Someone needs to get the Harvard Shop to start selling "back Harvard in its fight for higher education" T-shirts -- with proceeds to a legal defense fund -- pronto.

Thanks for writing this, very helpful guide the sites ... and the palimpsest of publications :)

One of these unread books, it has been said, was a certain monograph by Gregor Mendel. His anxiety was justified…

To Bees or Not to Bees: Greater Honeyguides Sometimes Guide Humans to Animals Other Than Bees, but Likely Not as Punishment We show that greater honeyguides guide humans to nonbee destinations (snakes and a dead mammal); yet this is a rare occurrence, happening in only 3.7% of human-honeyguide interactions in 1 year and 0...

"Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths" Lloyd-Jones & Projecto Sego advance knowledge of honeyguides again: "To Bees or Not to Bees: Greater Honeyguides Sometimes Guide Humans to Animals Other Than Bees, but Likely Not as Punishment" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Revealing how primatologists influence the endangered primates they observe is important science. An encouraging new NIA-funded study @Ngogo "Decreases in chimpanzee respiratory disease signs and enteric viral quantity following... " goo.gl/scholar/Lpxwur

Congratulations Cody!

Interesting that crosshatches seem to be used to represent what were likely the lion's rosettes. Crosshatches are a common motif in ancient art, likely to be stand-ins for more complex patterns

Consider how inaccurate this rendered illustration of the specific fossil KNM-ER 3733 is. It is an anatomical misrepresentation. The landmarks are completely bonkers-wrong. This kind of image is allowed by OpenAI policies, but photorealistic images of hypothetical human ancestors are not?

OpenAI's restriction on generating depictions of human ancestors is based on a hodgepodge of weak arguments e.g. "Photorealism Suggests Certainty" and "Scientific Reconstructions Are Themselves Hypotheses" (no shit). By these same criteria, almost everything this tool generates should be verboten.

3/3 Then the image disappears and the error message "I wasn't able to generate the requested image, as it involves content that is currently restricted by our image generation policies--specifically, lifelike depictions of ancient human ancestors".

2/3 A first glimpse of the partially rendered image is displayed, in truly stunning detail. Wow! What a great teaching tool this could be!

1/3 ChatGPT today released new capabilities to generate truly amazing photorealistic images. Sadly, depictions of human ancestors run afoul of their content policies. WHY???? The prompt "Make a photorealistic image of the ancient human ancestor homo ergaster using an achulean handaxe".