🇨🇦 Chris Sturdy 🇨🇦

Sahu, P.K., Deimeke, M.J., Garcia, A.D., Stenstrom, K.H., Smeltz, S.M.L., Wang, Y., Ratch, J., Sturdy., C.B. (accepted 20 February 2026). Re-examining hidden fitness: Female preferences for long-path songs in zebra finches. Registered report to appear in PLOS ONE.

Congratulations to @prateek754 and the rest of the members from @SNLab2002 in @psychualberta.bsky.social who just had a new registered report accepted to appear in PLOS ONE! Funded by #NSERC_CRSNG #TIPS_SPIIE @
@ualbertascience.bsky.social @youralberta.bsky.social

Behavioural processes, 225, 105151. lnkd.in/ghWs-7VP

Funded by NSERC, CRC, University of Alberta Faculty of Science, and the Department of Psychology.

Smeltz, S. M. L., Deimeke, M. J., Sahu, P. K., Stenstrom, K. H., Montenegro C., Rennie, V., Ebrahim, I., Starenchak-Baukhagen, I., Jones, J. A., & Sturdy, C. B. (2025). Individual vocal identity may be obscured following colony assembly in captive black-capped chickadees.

Congratulations to Sarah Smeltz from the Songbird Neuroethology Laboratory who won best student paper from the Comparative Cognition Society!

Middle aged white lady carrying a blue poster board sign with the words SEE YOU AT NUREMBERG FUCKERS

Froze my ass off at the Iowa City anti-ICE rally, but it was worth it

@InnovationCA University of Alberta @KillamTrusts @YourAlberta @ualbertaScience @Psych_UAlberta #albertaingenuity #kananaskisfieldstations

This would not have been possible without logistics and funding generously provided by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS)

The Songbird Neuroethology Lab turns 24 today! It has been great fun to get to work with such an amazing group of people over the years.

Funding from NSERC, Canada Research Chairs, and the University of Alberta Faculty of Science gratefully acknowledged.

Stenstrom, K.H., Deimeke, M.J., Sahu, P.K., Smeltz, S.M.L., Sturdy, C.B. (accepted 22 December 2025). What is rescue anyway: A comprehensive review of rescue and rescue adjacent behaviour across taxa. Manuscript to appear in Animal Behavior & Cognition.

Congratulations to Katie Stenstrom and the rest of the lab on an excellent new publication!

Stenstrom, K.H., Deimeke, M.J., Sahu, P.K., Smeltz, S.M.L., Sturdy, C.B.  (accepted 10 December 2025). Risk versus reward: A systematic review on the threat mobbers face. Manuscript to appear in Animal Behavior & Cognition.

Congratulations to @kt_stenstrom and the rest of the #SNLab2002 in @psychualberta.bsky.social on an excellent new publication! Funded gratefully by #NSERC_CRSNG #TIPS_SPIIE and @ualbertascience.bsky.social !

Congdon, J.V., Skurdal, A.M.M., Campbell, K.A., Hahn, A.H., & Sturdy, C.B. (accepted 26 Nov 2025). Black-capped chickadee (P. atricapillus) behavioural responses to avian and mammalian predator mounts of varying threat levels. Manuscript to appear in Learning & Behavior.

Congratulations to #jennacongdon and the rest of the
#SongbirdNeuroethologyLab members in @psychualberta.bsky.social on an excellent new publication! Funded generously provided by #NSERC_CRSNG !

By the Best Western?

Applications for MA, MSc and PhD programs in Psychology @ualberta.bsky.social are now open! For application information and FAQ, please visit our website below. Deadline December 1st. Join us!

www.ualberta.ca/en/psycholog...

Alberta overhauls election laws to allow corporate donations, change referendum thresholds | CBC News The Alberta government wants to bring back corporate and union political donations, eliminate vouching for a voter’s identity at election polling stations, and lower the threshold for recalls and refe...

A government under seven (7) different investigations for corruption just introduced a bill that would bring more corporate money into politics.

This is not normal.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

First author should be Smeltz! (Sarah M.L.) -- thank you @cbsturdy.bsky.social for correcting that

Thank you for your interest in our research. The first author’s last name is Smeltz.

Individual Discrimination Within, but Not Between, Two Vocalization Types of the Black‐Capped Chickadee Black-capped chickadees' chick-a-dee calls and fee-bee songs are individually distinct. We used an operant conditioning Go/No-go paradigm to train chickadees to discriminate among four individuals' c...

Caller ID: Meltz et al. (@cbsturdy.bsky.social) show black-capped chickadees learn to discriminate chickadee calls by individual in go/no-go task but don't generalize to feebee calls

Suggests they may use more context info in wild

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics

Oxford dons ‘drank wine from skull of a slave woman’ A silver chalice made with a sawn-off human skull was used regularly at formal dinners at Worcester College until 2015, according to a museum curator

www.thetimes.com/uk/history/a...

As Canada buckles down to protect its sovereignty, try to remember that Pierre Poilievre hand-delivered coffee and donuts to violent insurrectionists who wanted to overthrow the federal government and called for the murder of the Prime Minister.

Evolving language:

- Reports that HAQERS -- human-ancestor quickly evolved regions, acquired after split from chimpanzees -- influence language not general cognition
- Via altered behind of Forkhead transcription factors (eg FOXP2)
- Finds HAQERS-like seqs in other vocal learners

#prattle 💬

At NIH, ‘everyone is on edge’ as they brace for deep cuts and more centralized control As the NIH braces for cuts of up to 5,000 of its 20,000 positions, “people are scrambling and freaking out,” a researcher said.

NIH is likely cutting up to 25% of its workforce this week. NIH staff have substantial expertise, typically PhDs. And they really *believe* in the work. NIH's will not be able to meet its mission w/these cuts. The scientific threat is not just direct funding cuts www.statnews.com/2025/03/14/n...

There is a lot going on in this photo. It’s art.

I am excited to announce that @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social and I are co-editing a special collection in the journal Animal Cognition on "Cognition in the Wild". Submissions are due by June 15. We are excited to see the amazing work you have been doing! link.springer.com/collections/...

YouTube video by TheTragicallyHipVEVO The Tragically Hip - Montréal (Live From Molson Center, Montréal/2000)

In memorium 💔🥀 🇨🇦
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
#Dec6 #Canada
youtu.be/PaLb52ILCgw?...

🧵Tonight UofA announced at the GSA council that international tuition in 26/27 will be increasing an astonishing 10% for all undergraduate programs and course-based graduate programs. The increase for thesis-based program is still undecided. All domestic students will experience a 2% increase.