Bumble bees can apparently play with balls, count, recognize faces, & perceive rhythm. A new study out today in @science.org argues they can also solve novel tasks spontaneously without explicit training, challenging the idea that such cognitive skills are exclusive to large-brained vertebrates.😲🐝🧪👇
Day 0 at the Helsinki Animal Law Conference 2026: "Reimagining Justice Across Species". We started with the Tom Regan Memorial Lecture delivered by @visakurki.bsky.social
Also, I'm fascinated by the Oodi public library (I've always been a big fan of libraries and quiet places)! 🐾📚🐦⬛
Day 1 of the Helsinki Animal Law Conference 2026: "Reimagining Interspecies Justice" with talks by @annepetersmpil.bsky.social @eze-pz.bsky.social and Katja Tiisala!
Interesting reflections and plenty of food for thought to take home. 🐾🌱
🚨 I am very happy and excited to be in Helsinki and to be able to present my work at the Animal Law Conference 2026 in a couple of days! Funny thing: the sun was shining at 4am 🙈
Can bees be aware? Using a demanding learning task, researchers show that #honeybees behave as if awareness plays a role in their learning doi.org/10.1098/rspb... | #ProcB #Behaviour #Cogniton
In 2019, Animal Outlook uncovered horrible abuse at a salmon hatchery in Maine. The company said sorry & promised reforms (which satisfied Maine officials). Animal Outlook returned in 2025 and found even worse abuse. This has happened over & over again w/the biggest meat co's.
Tree Bumblebees don't just use 'old' bird nests, they will take over active bird nests and evict the adults, killing any eggs/young. Nestboxes artificially increase this competition, which is much rarer in cooler natural holes in trees. We did a paper in this:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
An exploration of how biological cooperation underpins all life - and why we’ve overlooked its power until now - makes thrilling reading, finds Penny Sarchet
If anyone wants to read more, I can recommend 'The Case for Epistemic Reparations' in the Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology (and Lackey has a new book entirely on this topic):
Newpipe and Freetube are really decent options to avoid all of this AI crap. newpipe.net and freetubeapp.io