Sebastien Moro

My paper on 🌱🦧 ANIMAL MEDICINE 🐜🍄, written with Cristian Saborido (office mate and tip-top philosopher of biology and medicine), is finally out in Philosophy of Science.

We offer a cool new framework for understanding medicine in different species, including our own. And it's ✨ OPEN ACCESS ✨

1/4 The role of predators and prey in the evolution of intelligence.

The hypotheses of social intelligence and ecological intelligence are insufficient; they argue here that what is missing from the equation is the arms race between predators and prey.

(paper) www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Raccoons optimally forage for information: exploration–exploitation trade-offs in innovation Animals in rapidly changing environments, such as cities, should optimize information gathering to learn about and efficiently forage in these heterog…

Raccoon information seeking! Very cool work on raccoons optimizing information gain in puzzle solving from @sarahba.bsky.social and lab:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Sibling number and early interactions shape social competence for life | PNAS The social environment experienced during development plays a crucial role in shaping social competence—the ability to respond appropriately to soc...

2026. Sibling number and early interactions shape social competence for life. [fish - highly social cichlid, Neolamprologus pulcher] PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Music exposure reduces anxiety- and depression-like behavior in rodents: a systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.27.708573v1

Development of cognition in corvids https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.27.708529v1

Attending the RSPCA Animals in Science Focus on Fish meeting. An exciting programme discussing hot topics in the welfare of fishes #fishsci #fishwelfare

Word!

Vampire bats target their social grooming to hard-to-reach body parts https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.25.707567v1

Cover featuring the article 'Decoding parrot duets: complex communicationin yellow-naped amazons' by Dahlin et al. Photo: JD Gilardi, World Parrot Trust

📣 The first issue of 2026 is now complete!

Showcasing cutting-edge #ornithology research ⬇️

vist.ly/4t9zh

Cover featuring the article 'Decoding parrot duets: complex communicationin yellow-naped amazons' by Dahlin et al.

📷JD Gilardi, World Parrot Trust

#birds #openaccess 🪶

New Publication Alert 🚨

"Reliability and precision of thermal imaging measurements to study animal behaviour and welfare" 🐐

w/ Marianne Mason & @amcell.bsky.social

Check out @peerj.bsky.social - peerj.com/articles/208...

#AnimalBehaviour #AnimalWelfare #NoninvasivePhysiology

The Role of Play in Animal Welfare Play is important for animals in captivity, both as an indicator of their emotional states and as a contributor to their long-term welfare.

The Role of Play in Animal Welfare | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anim...

Review: Understanding cattle social behaviour in modern penned production systems with AI technology: Are we tracking welfare indicators? Monitoring cattle social behaviour is fundamental for assessing animal welfare in modern penned production systems. Traditional observation methods ar…

2026. Review: Understanding cattle social behaviour in modern penned production systems with AI technology: Are we tracking welfare indicators? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

9/9 If a chicken benefits from immediately associating the sound 'Bouba' with rounded objects and 'Kiki' with pointed shapes (even the letters comply with this!), then this is because the world behaves this way, and this information eventually filters into the genes.

This is worth contemplating.

1/9 The Bouba and Kiki effect is confirmed in newborn chicks

Chicks just one day old already associate the rounded shape with the sound “Bouba” and the pointed shape with “Kiki,” and the implications are profound.

(paper) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1/4 Australian sea lions do something very similar to teaching their pups

They studied the behaviour of a mother in detail using video, GPS and accelerometers, and compared her trips alone with those when she was hunting with her young.

(paper) connectsci.au/zo/article/7...

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of t...

2026. Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨 New study by #SPEmembers 🚨
#AnimalBehaviour #Ethology

"Acoustic repertoire and anatomical features of the flying gurnard from the Adriatic Sea"
Horvatić & Vieira et al. with SPE members Manuel Vieira, M Clara Amorim, and Paulo Fonseca @ Journal of zoology

1/3 It seems that otters outperform chimpanzees in a well-known anticipation task.

This test uses a Y-shaped tube and is renowned for demonstrating the ability to predict an uncertain future with mutually exclusive possibilities

(preprint) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
by @sharinade.bsky.social

A comparison of concept learning ability in honeybees and bumblebees using matching-to-sample tasks https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.31.703063v1

TWS Journals We evaluated the resource selection of mule deer in relation to landscape characteristics (plant productivity, water, and topography) and disturbance factors (urbanization and recreation) across mult...

2026. Trade‐offs between selecting habitat and avoiding human disturbance for a widespread ungulate. [mule deer] wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Home Range and Habitat Selection of Chamois: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis A systematic review of 22 studies reveals a research bias toward the Alpine chamois, leaving other subspecies understudied. Males occupy larger home ranges, and the species consistently selects steep...

2026. Home Range and Habitat Selection of Chamois: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis. (Rupicapra spp.) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

2026. Wild boar feeding habits before versus after wolf recolonization. via @jzoology.bsky.social zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

NYAS Publications Various species of acoustic and bioluminescent insects, fiddler and ghost crabs, frogs, and birds precisely align sexual advertisement signals in synchrony or anti-synchrony. In solo animals, the sig....

2026. Rhythmic Entrainment and Sexual Selection in Animal Communication. nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

A real-time, multi-animal model for automatic face detection and identification of freely moving common marmosets based on YOLOv8 algorithms https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.703330v1

"Saw her in the Amazon
With the voltage runnin' through her skin
Standin' there with nothin' on
She gonna teach me how to swim"

for more about the electric (f)eel, check this primer by Ken Catania ⚡ www.cell.com/current-biol...

(and yes, finally some current biology in Current Biology)

Otters, but not apes, prepare for mutually exclusive possibilities. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.03.703448v1

Infant corpse carrying in Pan reflects maternal attachment and death context https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.28.702208v1

Graphic explaining the process to annotate sperm whale codas in western music notation. Step 1: Graphic of a person with headphones, listening. Step 2: A Spektrogram, showing sound amplitude over time, with four sperm whale clicks and three musical beats as red line. Step 3: Western Musical Notation, a 3/4 rhythm, four notes are shown.

Paper Out in #NYAS: Using Rhythmic Notation and Musical Analysis on Animal Communication: A Case Study on Sperm Whales🔊🐳
doi.org/10.1111/nyas...
We use Western music notation to transcribe sperm whale codas. What can we learn about them using musical analysis🎼🎶?

Barred hamlets rise up together in a coital embrace. Rare amongst vertebrates, hamlets are simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning pairs take turns mating with each other as male and female! Thank you for your service #coralcitycamera