William O'Hearn
Postdoctoral Researcher in Center for Animal Research, Uni Exeter | Studying social cognition and partner choice in baboons and macaques
Personal website: williamohearn.weebly.com
- Reposted by William O'HearnLoved presenting (via wild gesticulation) at the Society of Marine Mammalogy - UK and Ireland student chapter conference this week! Awesome to see such cool work being done by ECRs. #UKIRSC26 #marinemammals #research
- Charli Grimes discusses the social ontogeny of resident killer whales, exploring how lifelong social bonds form and change from early life through maturity. 🐋🤝 #UKIRSC26
- Reposted by William O'HearnLate-reporting, but last year some of our CRABbers headed up to Edinburgh to present their posters at the @asab.org Winter meeting. Well done all! @libbychaps.bsky.social @charli-ocean.bsky.social and @ Manuela Carona R
- Reposted by William O'HearnTodays FINE 2nd December, Cyril Grüter, University of Oxford, UK Title: Evolution of Inter-Group Social Dynamics and Multilevel Organization in Primates Zoom link opens at 16 :45 /10:45 urosario.zoom.us/j/87594920134 YouTube channel. www.youtube.com/channel/UClX...
- Reposted by William O'Hearn🚨Job Alert plz RT! Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition! We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals Open-rank apply.interfolio.com/178146
- Reposted by William O'HearnExcited to share our methods preprint on CapuchinAI! 🐒💻 We built a field touchscreen + real-time facial recognition system (YOLOv7) that lets wild capuchins “log in” and complete individualized cognitive tasks. @emoryuniversity.bsky.social @gatechengineers.bsky.social #PrimateCognition #AI
- CapuchinAI: Leveraging AI to study wild primate cognition biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by William O'HearnNew paper! We propose a framework to empirically study animal social relationships by modelling social network (SN) data as time-series—that is, without the need to aggregate them over time. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- New paper out in iScience. We found the pattern of Guinea baboon meat transfers follows the shape of their nested multi-level society. Transfers of meat are more tolerant at the lower levels of the society and are more likely to occur along stronger social relationships. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
- Reposted by William O'HearnSocial relationships are powerful predictors of fitness across social animals. But *why*? In our new @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social paper, we outline testable predictions for why relationship quality and quantity adaptively vary across socio-ecological contexts. tinyurl.com/55dnkeh7
- Reposted by William O'HearnCurious about how primates acquire and process social information to generate social knowledge? 🦧 Check out our new review paper on social evaluation, with a particular focus on the cognitive mechanisms involved in assessing others' skills and competence 👇
- 🔔 New paper out on Social evaluation of skill and competence in primates @mariehirel.bsky.social, @williamohearn.bsky.social and @julxf.bsky.social made this happen www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by William O'Hearn🔔 New paper out on Social evaluation of skill and competence in primates @mariehirel.bsky.social, @williamohearn.bsky.social and @julxf.bsky.social made this happen www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by William O'HearnNew @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/...
- Reposted by William O'HearnNew paper led by @josharbon.bsky.social. Adults jackdaws often bully youngsters, but we show they can learn to be tolerant and attend to juveniles as sources of information. @uniexecec.bsky.social. Funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk & @swbiodtp.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
- Reposted by William O'HearnSo 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.
- Reposted by William O'HearnWhen female gorillas leave one social group and join another, they tend to seek out groups with other females that they've lived with in the past, showing the power of long-term relationships.
- Reposted by William O'HearnOur new article is out! We explored how early life social experiences and age affect social connectedness measures later in life for captive female olive baboons. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions / want to discuss anything 😊🐒 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Reposted by William O'HearnVery excited to see our paper using historical data to infer toothed whale lifespans published this week in the Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society (@biojlinnsoc.bsky.social) doi.org/10.1093/biol... w. @darrencroft.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social @mialybkaer.bsky.social, Dan Franks
- Reposted by William O'HearnMy first co-author paper is out in Current Biology! In this study, led by Daniela Perez and Serena Ding, we show that nematode self-assembling towers occur in nature and can serve as a collective dispersal mechanism 🪱 Check out a video where Daniela explains the findings and the paper here 👇
- Move over, starling murmurations. There’s a slimier, squirmier collective behavior in town. It's a living, twisting tower of worms. Everybody, meet the wormuration 🪱🪱 Latest paper by Daniela Perez, Serena Ding and team @uni-konstanz.de Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... youtube.com/shorts/F8QVc...
- Reposted by William O'HearnPostdoc job alert! I'm hiring a 3-yr postdoc to work on our Social Modifiers of Primate Lifespans grant. Job info and how to apply below. Deadline June 1. Pls share! jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
- Reposted by William O'HearnThrilled to have the 1st project in my @snsf-ch.bsky.social Ambizione fellowship in @pnas.org this week. With Vic Martignac, @samellisq.bsky.social and @savinggorillas.bsky.social we asked what is a good social environment for a gorilla? And the answer was complicated... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Reposted by William O'HearnWell done @macaelaskelton.bsky.social, our MacaqueNet technician extraodinaire 💚
- To celebrate our new #MacaqueNet paper, I wrote a blog for @animalecology.bsky.social. This #StoryBehindThePaper shares how we came together to build the first standardised macaque social behaviour database! animalecologyinfocus.com/2025/04/10/m... #Macaques #BigTeamScience #ComparativeResearch
