Stuart K Watson
Postdoc at University of Zurich. Working on fuzzy insights into fluffy minds. He/him
- If anyone is wondering what to get me for christmas, I would mostly enjoy...4 citations. Nudge me over my 2020 peak! I'm so close to feeling alive again.
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonAdmissions to the International Master of Bioacoustics for the 26-27 academic year are now open. Please spread the word! More info here 👇 www.masterofbioacoustics.com?lang=fr #bioacoustics
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson1/12 Consciousness and attention in honeybees This study provides evidence of consciousness-like states in bees, revealing strong and fascinating parallels with vertebrate awareness. I will try to explain it in a few "tweets". (paper) www.cell.com/iscience/ful... by @catherinemacri.bsky.social
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonHerding as an emergent behaviour in harem groups of feral Garrano ponies: doi.org/10.1098/rsif... #JRSocInterface #bioinformatics
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonThe ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonIain Douglas-Hamilton was a champion for elephants 🐘 & one of the inspirations for my own research. He was among the 1st to study ele social behaviour & it was his life's work to protect them Sending my condolences to all the friends & family during this sad time www.bbc.com/news/article...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonFully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social. We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures. All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit... Please share / apply!🙏
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonRegistrations are now open 📢 Want to join the conference and/or the workshop? Head to our website: culture-conference.com/registration/ As every year, attendance at the conference is free 🎉 (the workshop has a small fee). Reminder: Abstract submission closes soon—submit yours before Monday!
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonBig new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonI finally got around to reading this. You should read it too. "We are exporting the very labor of teaching and learning—the slow work of wrestling with ideas, the enduring of discomfort, doubt and confusion, the struggle of finding one’s own voice." www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪
- I finally got around to reading this. You should read it too. "We are exporting the very labor of teaching and learning—the slow work of wrestling with ideas, the enduring of discomfort, doubt and confusion, the struggle of finding one’s own voice." www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonThe Culture Conference is (once again) indulging in that grand old tradition of EXTENDING the submission deadline‼️ The new deadline for abstract submissions is December 15th. Registration will open very soon—stay tuned! culture-conference.com/abstract-sub...
- Feel good movie of the year
- Be nice if you could put like "Hi reviewers, we could go with Figure format A or B here. What do you reckon is best?" into your manuscript but noooo I have to be brave
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonAfter 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: ow.ly/TKmf50XuPjY
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonNew Paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! 🎉 Sequence organization of mother–infant interactions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild. See the thread below for a quick explanation, and check out the paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonHarmony in the hive? Think again! 🐝⚔️ Insect societies are famous for cooperation, but beneath the surface lies a brutal conflict over who gets to wear the crown! Our new review in Biological Reviews explores the evolutionary battleground caused by such caste fate conflict. 🧵
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonOur New Paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour: 🚨 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! 🦧 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... See 🧵
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonRelying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other. Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonI am looking for an intern to support my PhD project on multimodal communication in common marmosets! 🐒🌞 Minimum commitment is 3 months full-time. Please note that this is an unpaid position and that remote options are not available. BSc and MSc students are welcome!🥰 @nccrlanguage.bsky.social
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonNo, they really haven't. Calling spectral peaks vowels is as inane as saying that because my washing up gloves are also yellow, they have the same nutritional content as a banana. Zero evidence of vowel-like function. It's pure clickbait, and a new low in irresponsible claims from this group 🙄🐳🦑🧪
- CETI scientists have discovered vowel and diphthong-like patterns in sperm whale communication! Read: bit.ly/3WSn9rc By: @begus.bsky.social, Ronald Sprouse, Andrej Leban, Miles Silva & Shane Gero. @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social, @umich.edu, @carleton.ca, @csail.mit.edu Animation: Meghan Fenske
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonNice piece from @hollyasmith.bsky.social on this from @thecowbirdlab.bsky.social et al. in @natecoevo.nature.com 🐦 Did learned vocal signals evolve from innate? 🐦 Authors study this in 21 avian hosts of brood parasites www.nature.com/articles/s41... #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics 1/2
- www.nature.com/articles/d41... highlighting our work!
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonFemale mountain gorillas in Bwindi live for years after their last birth, reshaping group life and stability. A study finds they may hold the evolutionary key to post-reproductive survival. #Primatology #BehavioralEcology #Gorillas #Evolution www.primatology.net/p/the-elder-...
- A very insightful account of some of the issues with existing frameworks for applying notions of semantics to animal communication by Gasparri. Critical but even-handed, lots of food for thought here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- It's hard to overstate the impact Jane Goodall had on my life, both in terms of essentially birthing my field, but also her deeply, contagiously humanist (for want of a better word) spirit. I've never been starstruck in my life except for the two occasions I met Jane, where I could barely talk.
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonSimply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...
- Very cool new study finding third-party imitation in blue-throated macaws by @esha-haldar2025.bsky.social et al. in Sci. Reports. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
- Feeling seen by the Oxford Uni job portal
- Important new work (from Elisa Bandini, @ctennie.bsky.social, @sofiaforss.bsky.social et al.) addressing an elephant in the room - how weird are our weirdest apes, and how is that skewing research efforts? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson📢 Our new paper is out in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social! A step toward more comparable approaches in bioacoustics! We tested how different acoustic feature extraction and classification methods affect caller ID classification accuracy. Read about it here: 🔗 shorturl.at/F31Pb
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonJoin us!!! 2 (!) PhD positions on wild chimpanzees and bonobos in the Ape Behaviour & Ecology Group and Wildminds Lab!!! 🤩🤩🤩
- 📣 Join the K/Creative Ape Team 🤓 2 PhDs on Creativity in Wild Chimpanzees & Bonobos; w myself & the v awesome @kathelijnekoops.bsky.social @snf-fns.ch Uni Zurich @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @efp2026.bsky.social @ips-primatenews.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social @primbehavecol.bsky.social 🐵🧪
- Amazing sounding project and a real dream team of supervisors - share widely and/or apply!
- 📣 Join the K/Creative Ape Team 🤓 2 PhDs on Creativity in Wild Chimpanzees & Bonobos; w myself & the v awesome @kathelijnekoops.bsky.social @snf-fns.ch Uni Zurich @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @efp2026.bsky.social @ips-primatenews.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social @primbehavecol.bsky.social 🐵🧪
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonChildren are incredible language learning machines. But how do they do it? Our latest paper, just published in TICS, synthesizes decades of evidence to propose four components that must be built into any theory of how children learn language. 1/ www.cell.com/trends/cogni... @mpi-nl.bsky.social
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonThe IPS EDEI committee has put together Conference tips for first timers with loads of great guidance on how to navigate your 1st conference. Available in English, en Français, & en Español Please share widely! Feedback welcome! internationalprimatologicalsociety.org/ips-conferen... 🧪🐒 #IPS2025
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonIt's out! 🎉 Together with @maelmleroux.bsky.social , @chimpsahoi.bsky.social, and S. Townsend, we wrote a chapter on methods for studying animal sequences. Huge thanks to @limorraviv.bsky.social and @cedricboeckx.bsky.social for editing this amazing volume! academic.oup.com/edited-volum...
- Delighted to announce the publication of a collaborative effort, co-led by @limorraviv.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social, showcasing the ways in which researchers have made language evolution an empirical issue: A handbook of experimental approaches to the fascinating problem of language evolution 🧪
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonHumans have many unusual traditions. But did you know animals’ strange behaviors can become culture too? Out now in Current Biology (doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...) we show the rise and spread of a surprising tradition: interspecies infant abduction. Interactive timeline (www.ab.mpg.de/671374) 🧵 (1/12)
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonHot off the press 📣: one of the most surprising and unsettling findings of my PhD. A novel social tradition emerged in the tool-using white-faced capuchins of Jicarón island… abducting and carrying the infants of another species. Thread with gifs, videos, and all the bizarre details 👇
- Humans have many unusual traditions. But did you know animals’ strange behaviors can become culture too? Out now in Current Biology (doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...) we show the rise and spread of a surprising tradition: interspecies infant abduction. Interactive timeline (www.ab.mpg.de/671374) 🧵 (1/12)
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson🚨Field assistant job in South Africa working with sociable weavers 🚨 🔌Experienced in electronics? 🏷️Enjoy working with RFID technology? 🪶Like working with birds? Find more information below! Applications close on 08/06/2025 sociableweaverproject.com/recruitment/... #fieldwork #ornithology
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonInterested in biology and comparative psychology, and working in an interdisciplinary project and research team? I’m advertising two PhD positions on the evolutionary origins of cooperative sociality and communication (start 1.10.) at the University of Konstanz👇 links below!
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonDo you teach cultural evolution? Then take a look at this opportunity to get money to release it open source for others to teach it, plus some additional funds for your research
- 📢 CES launches Advancing Cultural Evolution (ACE) Course Design Awards! 🎉 $4000 award + global impact for your cultural evolution course materials. Course must be college/grad level with 10+ hrs content. Application link: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #CulturalEvolution #Education #Grants
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonYep, that's because we are churning out more papers per scientist than ever -- evidence here, among other metrics about the publication market and it's unsustainable practices direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonI was sceptical this was real. It’s real. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson1/5 Chimpanzees take care of themselves and others. Cases in which chimpanzees have treated their own and other people's wounds (from cleaning them to applying medicinal plants). They also clean themselves after having sex or relieving themselves. (paper) www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonIt’s finally out!! Our new study shows that wild geladas seem to recognize prosocial vocal affiliation to victims of aggression! A key insight into the evolution of empathy in primates 🔊🐒 @geladasbridges.bsky.social @ethos-research.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonOnly two weeks left to apply! Come and join me, Alban Lemasson, Katie Slocombe and Simon Townsend! And spread the word to whoever might be interested! @efp2024.bsky.social @lasfdp.bsky.social @ips-primatenews.bsky.social
- 🚨 Job opportunity 🚨 A 3-year post doc position is opening as part of my #APELANG project funded by the @agencerecherche.bsky.social It’s about multimodal combinatorial communication in wild #chimpanzees 🐵 Job ad here: maelleroux-research.weebly.com/apelang.html And here 👇🏻
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonTLDR: new paper headed up by @vestaeleuteri.bsky.social & with an awesome team, incl @andrearavignani.bsky.social , showing chimps have rhythm in their drumming & differences b/w east & west drum rhythms! www.cell.com/current-biol... But didn’t we know this already you ask? Well… 🧵1/16
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonTune into this awesome new chimp drumming study!!! 🧵 🥁 Featuring the fabulous Nimba chimps!
- TLDR: new paper headed up by @vestaeleuteri.bsky.social & with an awesome team, incl @andrearavignani.bsky.social , showing chimps have rhythm in their drumming & differences b/w east & west drum rhythms! www.cell.com/current-biol... But didn’t we know this already you ask? Well… 🧵1/16
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonWe are hiring a chair/professor in our Ecology & Enviro Modelling group at @uniofstandrews.bsky.social. Scotland is lovely, and my colleagues are fantastic! Reach out if you are interested in joining the CREEM family ☺️ Working link this time 👇 www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonWanted to share a handy little resource with you all (especially those in dev psych) — my lab & I made a "journal submission cheat sheet" that summarizes article types, word limits, & other requirements for the journals we typically submit to. Link below 👇🏼 docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
- Absolute GOAT article title. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonPostdoc 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 Stuart K Watson🔽🐂
- Tldr; Researchers from UZH release LLMs into a sub-Reddit, pretending to be rape victims, trauma counsellors, bigots and PoC. These were even targeted to the personal data of the "subject". No consent from the 4m users of the subreddit was sought.
- The mods of r/ChangeMyView shared the sub was the subject of a study to test the persuasiveness of LLMs & that they didn't consent. There’s a lot that went wrong, so here’s a 🧵 unpacking it, along with some ideas for how to do research with online communities ethically. tinyurl.com/59tpt988
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonNew paper hot off the press! 🚨 Non adjacent dependency processing (or lack thereof) in bonobos. A special one, as Kanzi, who participated in the study, passed away a few weeks ago 😢 doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
- Our (@maelmleroux.bsky.social et al.) paper out today in #RSOS: we tested the ability of bonobos to process 'non-adjacent dependencies'. Surprisingly, unlike our prior work on chimps and marmosets, we found no evidence that they did so... royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
- Our (@maelmleroux.bsky.social et al.) paper out today in #RSOS: we tested the ability of bonobos to process 'non-adjacent dependencies'. Surprisingly, unlike our prior work on chimps and marmosets, we found no evidence that they did so... royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
- Our approach worked very well at detecting the capacity in other primate species (doi.org/10.1126/scia...) and even birds (doi.org/10.1016/j.is...). So, should we infer that bonobos lack this ability? That it evolved convergently in humans, chimps and marmosets? I think not, for a few reasons.
- Chief among them: Kanzi was one of our subjects. We KNOW that he could process NADs in spoken English, so what gives? This is not to say we should base what we think 'standard' bonobos can do on Kanzi, but rather that if even *Kanzi* doesn't perform in this task then we must think twice.
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View full threadBig thanks to all the care staff, administrators, funders (@nccrlanguage.bsky.social, @snsf-ch.bsky.social, @agencerecherche.bsky.social), the Ape Conservation & Cognition Initiative and bonobos that made this study possible. Here's that link again: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonBehavioural diversity in animals threatened by #biodiversity decline. In @science.org, @ammiekalan.bsky.social @uvic.ca & Lydia Luncz @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social emphasise the urgent need to develop strategies for preserving animal cultural #behaviour. tinyurl.com/569u66sv & doi.org/10.1126/scie...
- Fantastic 3-year postdoc opportunity working on communication in wild chimpanzees with a dream team of scientists!
- 🚨 Job opportunity 🚨 A 3-year post doc position is opening as part of my #APELANG project funded by the @agencerecherche.bsky.social It’s about multimodal combinatorial communication in wild #chimpanzees 🐵 Job ad here: maelleroux-research.weebly.com/apelang.html And here 👇🏻
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson🚨 Job opportunity 🚨 A 3-year post doc position is opening as part of my #APELANG project funded by the @agencerecherche.bsky.social It’s about multimodal combinatorial communication in wild #chimpanzees 🐵 Job ad here: maelleroux-research.weebly.com/apelang.html And here 👇🏻
- Reposted by Stuart K Watson"Findings suggest that compositionality [the capacity to combine meaningful elements into larger meaningful structures] is a prominent feature of the bonobo vocal system revealing stronger parallels with human language than previously thought." Fascinating work by @berthetmelissa.bsky.social et al.🧪
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonImportant 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/...
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonBonobos may combine words in ways previously thought unique to humans
- Reposted by Stuart K WatsonInteresting article in Science today about why we should safeguard animal cultures too doi.org/10.1126/scie...
