Zoology lecturer @hhu.de | Armchair biologist | Focus on rodents underground and gibbons in the trees, also one of @themanybirds.bsky.social | Organismic vertebrate biology | Views my own
Kai Caspar
ha ha. MUCUS from PTERASTER! A SLIME STAR! Enjoy! #echinoday youtu.be/RcV4-q7nMFw?...
Very nice new study on the underrated subterranean mole voles - showing further evidence for a social system with substantial similarities to cooperatively breeding African mole-rats (which are not closely related at all).
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Clacking wing bones together to woo mates
Male scissor-tailed nightjars create abrupt sounds by hitting the bones in their wings together
High-speed infrared video analysis of sonations in the scissor-tailed nightjar Hydropsalis torquata🧪
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Megistotherium osteothlastes doodle, the very first procreate test.
Thanks to @villesinkkonen.bsky.social for create these wonderful fur brusheset, so cool.
Big Team Science projects like @manybabies.org @themanybirds.bsky.social etc. are brilliant for more reasons that this short piece can cover, including their openness to researchers from all contexts and backgrounds - you don't even need to have access to the target population! #OpenScience
Walking on your knuckles is a weird way to get around, but it's normal for chimps & gorillas. Recently, Thompson & co showed that, while the hand posture is odd, the muscle contractions required are quite similar to a monkey's, which walk on their palms
doi.org/10.1242/jeb....
Now visiting the Macrauchenia at Krefeld Zoo.
"Our findings provide evidence that bumble bees can exhibit spontaneous problem-solving, challenging the notion that such advanced cognitive abilities are exclusive to large-brained vertebrates." 🧪
🦇How do insect-eating bats catch prey mid-flight? South American molossid bats have specialized tongue structures, including sensory papillae + nerve-rich tissues that detect, manipulate & retain insects during aerial capture
Rodriguez et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Excited by this new paper from Olli Loukola's team! edition.cnn.com/2026/06/04/s...
Kai Caspar
Chris Mah
MU-Peter Shimon 🀄
Scientists observe bumblebees rolling a ball underneath a flower to get sugar, showing complex problem-solving abilities.
Subterranean rodents are key model systems for studying the ultimate and proximate causes of cooperative breeding and reproductive skew. The northern mole vole is a truly subterranean, highly social c...
Problem-solving using novel solutions without explicit training is often considered a hallmark of cognitive flexibility. We investigated whether bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) could solve a novel obj...
