Diandra Duengen

What a funny & insightful post of @alenalem.bsky.social telling a bit about vocal learning in seals - and pokémons ;) what a nice idea!

So exciting!!! Highly recommended reading.

Neonatal auditory input affects vocal development in harbour seals. New paper by Teresa Raimondi & al. with Koen de Reus, Yannick Jadoul, @andrearavignani.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0369

📢 NEWS [🌊 MARINE] | Study suggests orcas may be hunting and eating their own kind in Russian waters, based on severed fins with tooth marks.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/cannibal-killer-whales
#MarineScience #Opportunity

💼 JOB [🐟 AQUA] | PhD on fish welfare assessment in public aquariums, focusing on behavior and physiology in the Netherlands. 📅 2026-03-18
https://www.euraxess.de/jobs/413956
#Aquaculture #ScienceJobs

How and why does cognition vary so greatly between individuals and species? In @natrevbiodiv.nature.com, we propose the "Predatory Intelligence Hypothesis" which posits that the cognitive challenges associated with predator–prey interactions drive a cognitive co-evolutionary arms race

rdcu.be/e5KIj

A new theme issue of #PhilTransB examines the mechanisms of learning from social interaction. Read articles for free: buff.ly/K8v43YM

🚨 JOB ALERT 🚨

2-year postdoc in canine behaviour at Linköping University, Sweden.

#AcademicSky #ScienceJobs

liu.se/en/work-at-l...

Evidence for representation of pretend objects by Kanzi, a language-trained bonobo Secondary representations enable our minds to depart from the here-and-now and generate imaginary, hypothetical, or alternate possibilities that are decoupled from reality, supporting many of our rich...

“Our findings suggest the capacity to form secondary representations of pretend objects is within the cognitive potential of, at least, an enculturated ape & likely dates back 6-9 million years, to our common evolutionary ancestors.” Amalia Bastos & @chriskrupenye.bsky.social today in @science.org.🧪

Gray Seal Cannibalism at the Largest Colony in the World, Sable Island Click on the article title to read more.

Another new paper led by SMRU's @izzylangley.bsky.social: First observations of grey seal cannibalism at Sable Island, inc. a comparison of carcass pathology to cases in Scotland. Collab between SMRU, DFO and @dalhousie.bsky.social with support from @oceanfrontier.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1111/mms....

New documentary on PBS: Can Dogs Talk?
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...
Do "speech buttons" really allow our dogs to speak to us? I'm one of a number of scientists interviewed, and the answer is...

Teachers and home schoolers- this is for you! Let's celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science together next week.

 Date: Wednesday 11 February 2026 (Term 1, Week 3)
 Time: 12:00–12:45 pm
 Platform: Zoom
 Cost: Free
 
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

#teachers #school #learn

Influence of water temperature, body size, condition and gull-inflicted lesions on heat loss in southern right whales in Península Valdés, Argentina Summary: Warm calving waters provide limited thermal benefits to southern right whales as body size and condition ensure effective insulation, although gull-inflicted lesions can compromise it in smal...

Our recent study in the Journal of Experimental Biology demonstrates how body size and condition reduce heat loss in southern right whales & that they do not need to migrate to warmer waters to offset heat loss in their newborn calves🐋

#marineecology #Science #marinemammalresearch #Rightwhales 🌐🌏🧪🌱

Young Asian Elephant Calves Show Differentiated Social Relationships With Conspecifics We studied spatial and behavioural interactions between young calves (< 6 months old) and conspecific females to understand social ontogeny in a wild Asian elephant population. We found differentiate...

🧪 ETHOLOGY: Baby elephants build social bonds early! 🐘💞
Revathe & Vidya show that Asian elephant calves form differentiated relationships early on: they interact closely with mothers and “escorts” who provide allomaternal care, while largely avoiding other females. Read: doi.org/10.1111/eth....

Bending back the biodiversity loss curve of sharks and rays. The loss of sharks and rays to date has involved serial depletion of the largest, most evolutionary and functionally distinct species, and the increasing prevalence of smaller-bodied species that have benefited from release from predation.

New paper out today in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com by the #GlobalSharkTrends team: Bending back the curve of shark & ray biodiversity loss;
Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eZ9n9
@sfu.ca
@sfubiosciences.bsky.social
@earth2ocean.bsky.social

Bats use 'acoustic flow velocity' to navigate complex environments in darkness A long-standing mystery about how wild bats navigate complex environments in complete darkness with remarkable precision, has been solved in a new University of Bristol-led study. The findings are pub...

New 🦇 research.

#bats #lovebats #naturalhistory #wildlife #batresearch

phys.org/news/2026-01...

😍

Learnt formant modulation via upper vocal tract movements in a marine mammal - Discover Animals Discover Animals - Formants are resonance frequencies shaped by the upper vocal tract. Across vertebrates, they have a key role in acoustic communication. Humans show fine-grained control of...

Here's a fun one - colleagues did formant analysis on a harbor seal before and after he learned to modify one of his vocalizations. A growing body of work suggests Phocinae seals really do have fairly high vocal production plasticity. Wonder why...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Sound symbolism facilitates interspecies communication between humans and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Sound symbolism facilitates interspecies communication between humans and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)

Communication between humans and domestic dogs 👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

de Freitas Scholarship for black British students. Marine masters degree tuition and stipend. Background image shows two students smiling as the paddle in the shoreline of a beach in the south west of England. In the bottom left corner is the University of Exeter Cornwall logo.

Huge opportunity for marine scholarships! 🌊💸🧪

💸 2x £30k scholarships available
🎓 Available to black British students
🐟 Eligible courses: MSc Marine Environmental Management or MSc Marine Vertebrate Ecology & Conservation

www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...
@exetermarine.bsky.social

How Animals Form Unlikely Alliances to Keep Predators Away Cross-species “defense pacts” help animals keep tabs on parasites and predators

How Animals Form Unlikely Alliances to Keep Predators Away

Fun 🧵 on vocal mimicry by @biotay.bsky.social that starts w/ a ref to this paper☝️ from @wascherclaudia.bsky.social Waterhouse @babeheim.bsky.social

(h/t to @irenegarciaruiz.com who we saw repost it)

bsky.app/profile/biot...

#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics
#R2D2

Looks like a really nice use of a Bayesian approach to identify vocal mimicry -- now published in Animal Cognition

#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics

Vocal convergence during formation of social relationships in vampire bats | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences In many group-living birds and mammals, the formation of affiliative relationships is hypothesized to cause vocal convergence (an increase in call similarity between individuals). However, testing this causal effect can be difficult, because it requires ...

Vocal convergence during formation of social relationships in vampire bats royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

😂 amazing.

Arctic seals edge closer to extinction as sea ice vanishes Three Arctic seal species have moved closer to extinction, as rapid sea ice loss continues to erode their breeding and feeding grounds, according to the latest update of the IUCN Red List of…

Arctic seals edge closer to extinction as sea ice vanishes

What Are the Best Schools to Study Marine Biology? In this edition of “Ask a Marine Biologist,” Dr. David Shiffman gives aspiring marine scientists things to consider when looking for in a college or university.

ICYMI: My longest article ever for Scuba Diving Magazine answers one of the most frequent career advice quesions I receive... and the answer probably isn't what you think!

Give it a read and share

www.scubadiving.com/best-schools... 🦑🧪

Photograph of researchers at their benches in the custom-built molecular biology labs of the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen, with green trees of the forest outside visible through large windows in the background.

Come join us for a 4-year PhD on effects of rare gene disruptions involved in speech disorder, investigated in human neuronal models (via gene-editing, tissue culture, brain organoids, high-res microscopy, transcriptomics, epigenomics).
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪

🗣️What makes music and language exclusively human?
🐾How do other animals communicate?
🎶Do they perceive melodies and rhythms as we do?

🎧ACOUSTIC WORLD is a podcast to explore bioacoustics and find answers to these and more questions.
Because the world has always spoken, you just need to listen!

Congratulations @lsburchardt.bsky.social et al. 🎉🎉 Super interesting!