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Reposted by Michael Haslam

BOU @bou.org.uk · 1d

The origins and functions of bowers in the Bowerbirds: a review and synthesis | doi.org/10.1080/0158... | Emu | #ornithology 🪶

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 1d

Reminder to vote each day (until 15 October) for Baudin's black cockatoo as Australia’s bird of the year.

Its jarrah habitat in Western Australia is about to be cleared for bauxite mining. Every bit of attention this endangered bird gets could help it continue to exist 🪶 🇦🇺🧪

Australian bird of the year 2025: vote for your favourite #birdoftheyear in the Guardian / BirdLife Australia poll

From little penguins to (very big) cassowaries, every bird has its fans. Vote for your favourite in the 2025 Guardian/BirdLife Australia poll

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 3d

For #StandingStoneSunday the magnificent Sueno’s Stone. Likely named for the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, but dating to the late 800s Pictish Fortriu kingdom.

It’s over 6 metres tall, with scenes of battle and beheading. The base has sword cuts from warriors pledging to their king 🏺🧪👑

📷 29 September 2025

A very tall stone carved on all sides, inside a protective glass box. The stone is in a grassy park with trees and houses nearby.

Detail of the base of the standing stone. On the thin face are carved mermen and people with swords. On the broad face at the base are a series of gashes in the stone, left by ancient warriors as part of an oath-taking ceremony.

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 3d

For #StandingStoneSunday the magnificent Sueno’s Stone. Likely named for the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, but dating to the late 800s Pictish Fortriu kingdom.

It’s over 6 metres tall, with scenes of battle and beheading. The base has sword cuts from warriors pledging to their king 🏺🧪👑

📷 29 September 2025

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 4d

Remember to hydra-te 🐉 🐉 🐉

Biodiversity Pics @biodiversitypix.bsky.social · 4d

🐉 Ulyssis Aldrovandi ....
Bononiæ, apud C. Ferronium, 1640..

[Source]

Historical illustration from 1640 depicting a dragon-like creature with a single coiled tail and a body covered in scales. It has three serpentine heads, each with open mouths showing sharp teeth. The creature clings to a vertical, textured surface, possibly a tree or rock. The image is detailed with fine linework emphasizing the textured skin and claws. The text above identifies the creature as a multi-headed hydra or dragon from Ulyssis Aldrovandi’s natural history work.

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Andrew Digby @digs.bsky.social · 6d

Sad to report that we've lost another #kakapo, and a particularly significant one. Solstice was the last kākāpō rediscovered, found on Rakiura in 1997. She died on the weekend as a result of complications from the #disease cloacitis. There are now 237 kākāpō left. #conservation #parrots #birds

An adult female kākāpō in an underground nest next to three eggs. Credit: Andrew Digby

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 7d

Jane Goodall was also the first to bring attention to wild tool-using vultures, which she spotted randomly one day while out driving. These birds use stones to break into ostrich eggs.

Be observant like Jane and who knows what you’ll see! 🧪🥚

A two page spread of national geographic magazine with a story by Jane Goodall and her husband reporting on egg-breaking, tool-using Egyptian vultures.

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 7d

Jane Goodall convinced a reluctant world that apes use tools, then became one of the great environmentalists. She never gave up hope for a better world, and was an inspiration to all who met her, including children worldwide.

Thank you Jane.

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 7d

Jane Goodall, Eminent Primatologist Who Chronicled the Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91. Gift link: nyti.ms/48FOuUn

nyti.ms

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 8d

My new favourite place from late medieval/Middle Ages Scotland. The Chapter House at Elgin Cathedral, rebuilt in the 1400s 🏺

📷 29 September 2025

A tall stone column in the centre of a spacious octagonal room, supporting a vaulted stone ceiling with radiating supports. Intricate glass windows are on each wall, with slightly different designs. A low bench with blue cushioning runs around the lower part of the walls.

The same room as the previous photo, looking straight up at the vaulted ceiling from beside the central column. The impression is like looking at a stone star, or spiderweb.

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 10d

Your daily reminder that tool use is not about ‘intelligence’ or having hands. It’s about a coincidence of object and actor with time to explore and a need to fill.

Whether tool use spreads can depend on social stuff like who’s watching, but isolated tool use springs up everywhere all the time 🏺🐮🛠️🧪

cow tools daily @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social · 11d

ummm.. holy shit? tool use in bovids confirmed? holy holy shit?

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 10d

I’m not sure of the origin of the video, possibly Gus the Brahman on Facebook (I’m not on Facebook so can’t dig deeper there)

Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 10d

Your daily reminder that tool use is not about ‘intelligence’ or having hands. It’s about a coincidence of object and actor with time to explore and a need to fill.

Whether tool use spreads can depend on social stuff like who’s watching, but isolated tool use springs up everywhere all the time 🏺🐮🛠️🧪

cow tools daily @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social · 11d

ummm.. holy shit? tool use in bovids confirmed? holy holy shit?

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 11d

Night sky in the Cairngorms, Scotland

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🔭🪐

(📷 yesterday)

A long exposure phone camera photo of a dark sky crossed by the Milky Way and dusted with stars. The top of some pine trees are at the bottom of the image. It’s quite blurry if you zoom in.

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Marta Mirazon Lahr @martamlahr.bsky.social · 11d

#ESHE2025
Rhianna Drummond-Clarke ‘First documentation and quantification of wild chimpanzee rock climbing’
Camera traps, Issa Valley TZ & Moyen Bafing, Guinea chimps

Rock vs tree climbing: more dynamic movements, biomech diff locomotor modes, reaching further- role of uneven substrates!
Amazing 😍

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Taï Chimpanzee Project @taichimpproject.bsky.social · 12d

📢JOB alert📢
Application for the camp manager position at the @taichimpproject.bsky.social is open now. We seek a new camp manager starting on January 1, 2026, for 2+1 years (3rd year optional) working with and for wild chimpanzees in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire.👇

emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/I...

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 12d

Huge thanks for all these updates Marta!

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 13d

This is the way it was 🏺

Promotional poster for the 1966 film One Million Years BC, in honour of the finding announced today that the Homo sapiens lineage may have been around for that long. The poster features Raquel Welch, some dinosaurs, and the tag line ‘This is the way it was’

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 13d

A new fossil reconstruction implies our lineage was separate by a million years ago 🏺💀🧪

‘The origin of the longi clade can be inferred to be about 1.2 Ma, slightly older than the Yunxian fossils. The origin of the sapiens clade is estimated to be about 1.02 Ma, also close to the age of Yunxian’

Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · 13d

The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans

Diverse forms of Homo coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene. Whether these fossil humans represent different species or clades is debated. The ~1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 fossil from China is impo...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 14d

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪

Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students.

I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 16d

#PossumArchaeology 🏺

Jack Ashby @jackdashby.bsky.social · 16d

The edges of this tree-hollow and the branch next to it have been worn smooth by what must be generations of #possums coming and going.
The tree is a pencil pine - one of #Tasmania's endemic treasures. These slow-growing mountain giants can live for 1000 years. That's a lot of possums. 🌲 #trees

A tree trunk with a large hole in it, above a roaring river. The edges of the bottom of the entrance to the tree-hollow, and the branch immediately outside of, are a smooth peachy brown, in contrast to the grey brown of the rest of the wood

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

David G Haskell @dghaskell.bsky.social · 20d

Somehow, somehow the knowledge of where to go and when to leave is encoded in the genes of the green darner dragonfly.
I found this one, a male judging from his neon blue abdomen, sitting on the concrete outside a store in a strip mall in Atlanta. He likely hatched in a pond in Quebec or NY 🧵...

dragonfly on concrete. green head, bright blue abdomen

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Reluctant Antagonist (KJ Colt) @moistenedtart.bsky.social · 20d

Oh.

That doesn’t seem right

Text reads:

Google search bar: “how to clean a rescued pigeon”

Al Overview

Pigeons are usually clean, even wild ones.
You can try these steps to clean a rescued pigeon:
• Remove the label
• Remove the head
• Make a small incision in the wing and snap to join
•Cut off the wing
•Remove the legs
• Clean the top bone

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 22d

Congratulations!

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 24d

Coos in the mist 🐄

Sunday sunrise in Birsay, #Orkney

Colour photo of a sunrise over a low hill on the left. It illuminates grasslands and a loch on the right, with banks of mist in the distance. Closer there is a barbed wire fence and five cows (or coos as we call them up here) standing peacefully in their paddock.

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Reposted by Michael Haslam

Cara Giovanetti @idontevencara.bsky.social · 25d

Lizards are famous for their ability to detach their tails under stress. But how do they manage to drop them so quickly, and why do they never seem to accidentally lose their tails if they come off so easily?

1/8 🧪⚛️

A common house gecko, tail still attached. Image credit Basile Morin for Animalia.bio, CC BY-SA 3.0

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