Ondrej Fiser

🌙 Noc vědců se Zeptej se vědce bude i v Praze!

👉 Tak si uložte 26. 9. v 19:15 na Přírodovědecké fakultě UK. 👈

👀 A s kým se uvidíte? ⬇️

1/3 Rooks that understand us when we speak!

Leo, a 21-year-old rook, began following verbal instructions spontaneously during comparative cognition experiments. He has been tested for this ability, and did great.

(paper) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Goffins being social in Singapur - enjoying fieldwork with @theroesa.bsky.social

Stay tuned for a very exciting update coming shortly from the ManyBirds Project! Eeek!

Thanks! 🙏

Thank you and take care 🙏🦅

Thank you 🦅🙏

🎓✨ It’s official – I am now a Ph.D. 🎓✨
After years of research, fieldwork, writing, and countless discussions, I successfully defended my dissertation on predator recognition in birds.

I couldn’t have done this without the support of my colleagues, mentors, friends, family and birds. Thank you! 🦅🙏

In robins, males and females sing to defend a territory. A new paper in @royalsocietypublishing.org shows that both increase vocal effort when hearing the song of an intruder, regardless of its sex. This highlights the role of female birdsong in displaying aggression: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

A figure showing that light pollution prolongs avian vocal activity by nearly an hour. (A) Most diurnal bird species show bimodal vocalization patterns with peaks in the morning and evening; in light-polluted landscapes (yellow shading), the first vocalizations occur earlier in the morning and the last vocalizations occur later in the evening. (B) Globally—averaged across species, space, and season—onset of morning vocalization shifted 18 min earlier in the brightest landscapes versus the darkest landscapes. (C) Similarly, evening cessation was delayed by an average of 32 min. In (B) and (C), lines are means and shaded regions are 95% confidence intervals (CI) of model predictions.

Light pollution is causing birds around the world to sing for longer each day, prolonging their vocalizations on average by 50 minutes, according to a new study in Science.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/3Uz7vzP

🤩 Both amusing and informative! #BirdCognition #Ornithology 🪶

Picture of a copy of "Bird Brains and Behavior" by Striedter & Iwaniuk: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552738/bird-brains-and-behavior/

Broad in scope but strikingly concise, highly accessible, and nuanced - go get this book if you have even the slightest interest in birds and/or vertebrate brain evolution. I will use it a lot. Congrats @evoneuro.bsky.social!
#neuroskyence 🧪

Wild jackdaws learn to tolerate juveniles to exploit new foraging opportunities | Biology Letters Social tolerance can enhance access to resources and is thought to be crucial in facilitating the evolution of cooperation, social cognition and culture, but it is unknown whether animals can optimize...

New @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social paper out today in @royalsociety.org Biology Letters. We found adult jackdaws can learn to tolerate usually bullied or ignored juveniles when they provided information about a new foraging resource.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Response to intruder number is related to spontaneous quantity discrimination performance in a wild bird The ability to discriminate between quantities is important for animal species. We show that wild magpies can discriminate both between different quantitie

New paper alert 🚨 We test quantity discrimination in #magpies using both a cognitive task and playback experiment and find that birds can discriminate between quantities in both! Interestingly, performance in the two task was negatively correlated! 🐦
@mandyridley.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1093/behe...

YouTube video by Frankfurter Kunstverein Born Knowing: The Innate Knowlegde in Our Heads – Lecture by Prof. Dr. Giorgio Vallortigara

The video of the talk in Frankfurt on "Born Knowing" by MITPress (in English) and by Adelphi (translated in Italian)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfEp...

Numerical cognition in birds Nature Reviews Psychology - Birds demonstrate complex numerical abilities at levels similar to primates. In this Review, Regolin and colleagues describe the contribution of laboratory, field and...

Our new review on numerical cognition in birds, just out in Nature Reviews Psychology! 🐦🧠

Behavior, neurobiology & field studies across avian species

Very fond of the neurobiology part :)

📖 Read it here: rdcu.be/eyErI

The physiological cost of leadership in collective movements Individuals can gain substantial benefits from collective actions.1,2,3,4,5,6,7 However, collective behaviors introduce new challenges, like coordinat…

Out now: The physiological costs of leadership

We reveal that initiating movements—especially when attempting to initiate against a majority and when there is directional conflict—drives elevated heart rates in vulturine guineafowl

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@currentbiology.bsky.social

1/4 Use of tools (for allogrooming) in orcas

They have been recorded (Salish Sea) using kelp, cutting it (technically the first documentation of toolmaking in cetaceans) and using it to groom others.

(paper) www.cell.com/current-biol...

Pinyon Jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) and Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) can discriminate between pilfering and non-pilfering conspecifics, but not between heterospecifics - Animal Cogni... When foraging, individuals often need to assess potential risk from competitors. Within many food-caching (food-storing) species, individuals can modify their caching behavior depending on whether oth...

Late to the party but the last paper of my PhD was published earlier this year!
Pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) and Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) can discriminate between pilfering and non-pilfering conspecifics, but not between heterospecifics link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fig. 1 from the article. Overview of the selective and non-selective forces influencing the expression of same-sex partnerships in birds, adapted from the framework for understanding same-sex sexual behaviour in Clive et al. (2020). Illustration: Bertille Mohring

NEW PAPER: Same-sex partnerships in birds: a review of the current literature and a call for more data.

➡️ vist.ly/3n99bk6

#ornithology #birds #same-sexbehaviour #review #partnerships @tashgillies.bsky.social @katrina-siddiqi.bsky.social

Illustration: @bertillemohring.bsky.social

https://www.livescience.com/63923-why-cities-have-so-many-pigeons.html

1/2 Pigeons pay attention to where other pigeons are looking

They used a motion capture system to study this. The probability of them paying attention to an object increases with the number of pigeons already looking at it. It is linear, with no quorum or limit

(paper) www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Sure :)

Od špačků k hashtagům: Hejna na nebi a v online světě lidí

👨‍🔬 Etolog Ondřej Fišer a filozof jazyka Tomáš Koblížek na této dvojpřednášce objasní, jak výzkum ptačích hejn inspiruje studium internetových komunit.
@laniusondrej.bsky.social
@tomaskoblizek.bsky.social

Opportunities — ASAB

We are seeking a full-time Managing Editor for our journal Animal Behaviour. This editor will be involved in all stages of the publication process & must have a general understanding of the topics covered. Position starts Oct 1, application deadline July 31.

More details:
www.asab.org/opportunities

YouTube video by Zeptej se vědce Proč se ptáci slétájí do hejn? | Od špačků k hashtagům #part1

👨‍🔬 Etolog Ondřej Fišer a filozof jazyka Tomáš Koblížek objasní, jak výzkum ptačích hejn inspiruje studium internetových komunit.

👍 První část - spolupráce ptáků.
👀 youtu.be/CL2oHBFcd-E?...

✌️ Druhá část - internetová hejna (brzy na Youtube).

@laniusondrej.bsky.social
@tomaskoblizek.bsky.social

NEW PAPER🎺
How does cognition determine an individual’s fitness? A systematic review of the links between cognition, behaviour and fitness in non-human animals

Lots of studies try to explain how cognition might evolve, by taking a behavioural ecology approach

Has this approach made any progress?🧵

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1929

Selection Shapes Diverse Animal Minds: our special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org Phil Trans B on the diverse evolutionary processes underlying cognitive evolution is out today. Thanks to all our contributors! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Five white Goffin's cockatoos sit on various branches of a small tree with large green leaves. They have cute, big eyes and quite small beaks. They are about the same size as the leaves.

Why did some birds evolve to be so clever? Mark O'Hara & Berenika Mioduszewska took on the challenge of studying wild Goffin's cockatoos on a small Indonesian island.
Their exciting findings help answer that question.

Listen: linktr.ee/wild_behavior_pod
Photo: Goffin Lab Tanimbar

Birds in same-sex pairs successfully rear chicks Same-sex partnerships in birds provide direct and indirect benefits for both individuals and whole populations.

Yes, #birds do form same-sex relationships. No, this does not mean the end of the species. 🪶🧪🏳️‍🌈

New newsletter post for Beaks & Bones! Available here:
beaksandbones.substack.com/p/same-sex-p...

#ornithology #biology #scicomm

Screen shot of an article: Animal Behaviour Volume 223, May 2025, 123122 Personality composition affects group cohesion of homing pigeons in response to novelty and predation threat Giulia Cerritelli, Dimitri Giunchi, Robert Musters, Irene Vertua, Lorenzo Vanni, Diego Rubolini, Anna Gagliardo, Claudio Carere

🐦Pigeons! 🙀Personality! 👥Flock cohesion! 🦅Predation threat!

Our May #ASABEditorsChoice for the #AnimalBehaviourJournal: “Personality composition affects group cohesion of homing pigeons in response to novelty and predation threat”

Read here: doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123122