Elliot Howard-Spink

Dispersed female networks: female gorillas’ inter-group relationships influence dispersal decisions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Dispersal is a fundamental aspect of many animal societies, impacting gene flow, knowledge transmission, culture and individual fitness. However, little is known about the information individuals use when dispersing. Mountain gorillas exhibit a flexible ...

So happy to see my first PhD paper out royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

With my amazing supervisor @robinmorrison.bsky.social and the @savinggorillas.bsky.social, we examined female dispersal decisions in mountain gorillas.

Exciting new opening @nccrlanguage.bsky.social with the option of permanent extension. If you work in cutting-edge stats and are interested in joining a highly inter-disciplinary, vibrant community, don't hesitate to apply at tinyurl.com/3fxwjk8e

Please consider helping us support the next generation of primatologists! Any support is greatly appreciated, and will help us host this fantastic event for the second time! 🐒

Brilliant to see this fascinating research! We're especially delighted to see @ehowaspi.bsky.social, visiting researcher at the @qmulsbbs.bsky.social, contributing to this amazing study.

Chimps age - and when they do, using tools becomes more difficult.

Pretty relatable.

Article by @ehowaspi.bsky.social et al. here: elifesciences.org/articles/105... - and footage below.

🧪🌍🐒🔧

Then vs Now: Same chimp, same task - 17 years apart 🐒🔧

New Oxford-led research suggests that ageing can affect how wild chimpanzees use tools, though the impact varies widely between individuals.

More info ⬇️
www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-07...

Additionally, huge thanks go to all coauthors on this study, Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Susana Carvalho, Cat Hobaiter @nakedprimate.bsky.social, Katarina Almeida-Warren, and also both of my former DPhil supervisors, Thibaud Gruber @thibaudgruber.bsky.social & Dora Biro @dorabiro.bsky.social! 🙌

Many thanks to all researchers and field assistants involved with data collection over the years at Bossou, and in curating the Bossou video archive. (📸 credit T Matsuzawa).

Past their prime? Tool use declines with age in wild chimpanzees | New research led by University of Oxford researchers has found that old age likely impacts the habitual tool-use behaviours of some wild chimpanzees – although the extent to which different

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-07... here!

Old age takes its toll on tool use in wild chimpanzees New research finds old age likely impacts the habitual tool-use behaviours of some wild chimpanzees, and the extent to which different individuals are affected is highly variable.

For more information, check out the paper, or this summary of our work: elifesciences.org/for-the-pres... and also

Our results provide some of the first insight into how old age can influence the cultural, technical behaviours of wild animals - importantly, these results give first evidence that some chimpanzees may experience periods of technological senescence, whereas others' behaviours are robust to aging.

The precise effects of aging on tool engagement, selection and efficiency differed between individuals, suggesting that old age can exacerbate interindividual differences in tool use for wild chimpanzees.

Using 17 years of video footage of chimpanzees cracking nuts using stone tools at Bossou, we found that older individuals began attending experimental nut cracking sites less often over time (but younger adults didn't). With aging, some elderly individuals also became less efficient tool users.

Old age variably impacts chimpanzee engagement and efficiency in stone tool use Long-term standardized data collection on wild western chimpanzees reveals late-life changes in stone tool use, and the extent of these changes varies between individuals.

New paper out in eLife! 🎉 Old age variably impacts chimpanzee engagement and efficiency in stone tool use elifesciences.org/articles/105... (including videos of wild elderly chimpanzees using tools! 🪨 🌰)

Congratulations!!!!

The evolution of infant-directed communication: Comparing vocal input across all great apes Human infants receive more directed communication than other great ape infants, indicating that it evolved alongside language.

1/n Hot off the press!
The first empirical chapter of my PhD and the fruit of a hugely collaborative project led with Franziska Wegdell and Johanna Schick is out! We explore if immature-directed vocalisations are present and in what quantity in wild great apes.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Orangutans nap to make up for lost sleep New study reveals that wild orangutans recover from sleep loss with daytime naps, much like humans do

News you can use for better sleep 💤

Like us, orangutans need a good night's sleep. If they don't get enough, they squeeze in a nap the next day. They even have a trick: up to 10 mins napping for each hour missed last night. Try it at home.
@livingingroups.bsky.social

www.ab.mpg.de/718751/news_...

Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos Compositionality, the capacity to combine meaningful elements into larger meaningful structures, is a hallmark of human language. Compositionality can be trivial (the combination’s meaning is the sum ...

Important study yielding new insights into the deep roots of aspects of our communication system/#language— @berthetmelissa.bsky.social M. Surbeck and S. Townsend did great work to reveal semantic composition in vocal combinations in bonobos. 🧪 Out in @science.org :
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Haha I will try my best ;-) keep it up - persistence is key and it sounds like there is progress!

Sorry to hear things are so manic, but it sounds like you are doing well to get your foot in the door in a few places! (As you say, that can often feel impossible in itself). If I can help/give any advice just drop me a message.

For more details, check out the preprint. A huge thank you to everyone who has collected data for this project at SUAQ, and to all collaborators!

This suggests that early hominin cultures were more expansive than can be predicted from surviving artifacts alone, including key information used for daily decision making.

Whilst accumulating culturally-dependent expanses of knowledge is a key facet of humans' generative and open-ended cultures, or results suggest that this capacity is likely ancestral to (at least) great-ape species.

In extension, we evidence that the breadth of cultural knowledge possessed by orangutans is likely more expansive than any one individual could produce independently (thus, a 'culturally-dependent repertoire').

We show that cultural transmission is essential for orangs to learn basic subsistence information in the wild. The repertoire of cultural information possessed by apes is likely to be far more expansive than social customs and highly technical skills, including simple info about 'what to eat'.

Preventing peering significantly slowed diet development, and removing enhancement effects on top of peering led to a larger step-wise reduction in diet size. Social enhancement (as well as maternally-directed exposure to different foods) may influence the majority of diet learning in orangutans.

Even when orangutans were presented with over 148,000 opportunities to interact with different food items over long-term development, orangs only developed adult-like diets (at least 90% adult repertoire) by adulthood if they also engaged in social learning.

Every single parameter of our ABM was estimated from wild data. When simulated orangs could engage in forms of social learning seen in the wild, timings of diet development matched those observed in wild individuals (validating that our ABM captured wild orangs' learning from real-world inputs).

Leveraging over a decade of behavioral data collected in the wild, we constructed an agent-based simulation (ABM) of orangutan diet development between birth and adulthood (~15 years), focusing on individual exploration + social influences on exploration, e.g. exposure, enhancement and peering.

To answer these questions, we investigated whether social learning has important, long-term effects on the rate and outcomes of diet development in wild Sumatran orangutans.