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Claudio Tennie

@ctennie.bsky.social

3.8K followers 1.2K following 170 posts

Group Leader, Uni Tübingen | Humans, hominins, and apes | Evolution of human cultural evolution -> When and how did we get from ape-like cultures to deep & broad open-ended cultural evolution? https://sites.google.com/view/claudiotennie

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Dec 13

Bsky is growing - follower lists do, too.

Let me introduce myself.

I study archaeology, biology & psychology. The common theme: evolution of cultural evolution (especially of: tools).

Two recent interviews give an overview:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8UK...

&

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB31...

#700 Claudio Tennie: Tool Behaviors in Great Apes, Cultural Transmission, and Cumulative Culture

YouTube video by The Dissenter

www.youtube.com

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 10h

@chimpsahoi.bsky.social So it's possible.

Reposted by Claudio Tennie

ManyBirds Project @themanybirds.bsky.social · 1d

🐦 Exciting news! Our new paper is out in PLOS Biology:
“A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia.”
Led by the #ManyBirds Project - 129 researchers, 82 institutions, 24 countries 🌍
🔗 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
@themanybirds.bsky.social

A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia

Neophobia (the aversive response to novelty) varies considerably across species and individuals, and can impact adaptability and survival. This study assesses neophobia in 1400 subjects from 136 bird ...

journals.plos.org

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 17h

Wanted to make a joke that the 99.7 percent accuracy might include your main take-home message being reversed by AI-insertion of the word "not". But the real joke in all this is much better even.

Michael Eisen @mbeisen.bsky.social · 17h

Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com

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Reposted by Claudio Tennie

ESLR @eslr.bsky.social · 13d

📢🚀 Are you an early-career researcher working on anything related to culture, behaviour or learning? 🧠🌍 Join ESLR, an interdisciplinary research community! We have a NEW website and our membership is now FREE. 👉 Sign up here to get updates and become a member: www.eslrsociety.com/membership

ESLR | Membership

www.eslrsociety.com

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 14d

Looks like "Krüger" to me

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 19d

Watched it a few years ago. Still recovering.

The Fake History Hunter @fakehistoryhunter.net · 19d

Of course there was also the delight of watching 'The Day After', just in case you had any hope for the future left.
But the holy grail of trauma collecting was watching 'Threads', for which I still need to gather courage to watch.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads...

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 28d

Thank you. Did you mean: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Yes, agreed, all contemporary humans, everywhere, do things that require special explanations. MET-based explanations feature as intriguing contenders in all cases. I am sure Tim agrees with that.
As I said: I think it's all compatible.

Women’s subsistence networks scaffold cultural transmission among BaYaka foragers in the Congo Basin

The age structure of women’s subsistence networks shapes opportunities for social learning.

www.science.org

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 28d

I think both of your takes are not only right but compatible. Going back deeply in time with ETI thinking can link these accounts. To have language one needs to copy in special ways (not seen in apes; not enough, anyway) and special group cooperation etc.: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Zooming out the microscope on cumulative cultural evolution: ‘Trajectory B’ from animal to human culture - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - Zooming out the microscope on cumulative cultural evolution: ‘Trajectory B’ from animal to human culture

www.nature.com

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 29d

You were not kidding when you said it's like doorstopper size, @jeremykendal.bsky.social :-)

The Oxford handbook of cultural evolution book

Reposted by Claudio Tennie

Tim Waring @twaring.bsky.social · Sep 15

📃 Check out the paper in BioScience:

"Cultural inheritance is driving a transition in human evolution" academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

But, wait, is this bullshit?

Cultural inheritance is driving a transition in human evolution

Abstract. Previous research on a transition in human evolution has been befuddled by the complexity of adaptive culture and made little effort toward empir

academic.oup.com

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 14

You forgot about portable AI

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 14

Exactly. In-ear-canal hearing devices exist already - so I guess its just a matter of time. Months, likely. They would only need to last a few minutes, so I guess its feasible, and doable - and so I guess they will come soon.

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 14

Just looked. Seems there is at least already a demand for this: www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/co...

From the ChatGPT community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the ChatGPT community

www.reddit.com

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 14

I would not be suprised if tiny ear-pieces, connected to AI, already exist that listen in and can prompt answers.

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 10

From up the hill in Tübingen. Congrats!

Science X / Phys.org @sciencex.bsky.social · Sep 10

Carrion crows can be trained to use stick tools with precision and flexibility, demonstrating advanced motor and cognitive skills not typically seen in their wild behavior. doi.org/g927xw

Carrion crows can learn precise tool use

Animal training can teach carrion crows to use a stick tool to retrieve food. With increasing practice, they not only demonstrate great skill and achieve their objective in a few steps, they also respond flexibly to varying conditions in the experiment.

phys.org

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Reposted by Claudio Tennie

Katrina Navickas @katrinanavickas.bsky.social · Sep 10

Absolutely astounded that the UCU and Unison branches at Kent and Greenwich were not consulted, and that staff only found out about the merger this morning via BBC news and Kent Online. Solidarity to all colleagues.

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Reposted by Claudio Tennie

Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · Sep 8

Still waiting for your recommendations! In the meantime, given the need to understand healthcare news, I recommend following @trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com

Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · Aug 31

I am going to implement this tip as a bsky starter pack! To help, all you need to do is to suggest bsky accounts of people who match this description and are useful bulwarks against misinformation. I will take the top 5-10 and make them into our ultimate starter pack security blanket.

These two tips are the most important. The last tip is a bonus recommendation. Find a few people, not too many, that you think you can more or less trust. Ideally, they should be smarter than you, more knowledgeable concerning some areas than you are, more emotionally stable and mature, and themselves have a network of people smarter and more knowledgeable than they are. Their primary source of income and social success should not be tied to you believing them. Cull the list mercilessly whenever you think you are being manipulated or when they are not on the level, but never remove someone from the list because you disagree with them (that goes against the whole point of trusting them!). Once you have this list of people you trust, instead of trying to decide what is true in each case, something we already concluded is a fool’s errand, blindly trust these people. Especially if they all agree about something. When you have the time, skills, inclination, and tranquility then, by all means, do the digging yourself. But assuming you have to earn a living, raise a family, have hobbies, and whatnot, you should not try to rationally decide what the evidence says about things you are not an expert on.

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Reposted by Claudio Tennie

Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · Sep 6

Journal publishers *are* bundling your papers up in "data licensing agreements" for big tech companies to use for AI model training. Our publisher, T&F, got £75m from Microsoft for that last year alone.

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 5

It's truly down on the individual to make the internet function these days

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 5

This is also why, whenever I eventually manage to get a recipe I like, I hold on to it for dear life (and so I save the actual recipe part in my phone's telephone book - as if it were a person)

Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · Sep 5

Which would you prefer?
1. ChatGPT
2. Google & The entire internet --- but without ads, spammy content, etc. Like recipe sites would just give you the recipe with photos.

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Reposted by Claudio Tennie

Laura Jennings @botanistlaura.bsky.social · Sep 5

It's been a great week for weird biology: ants defying the species concept, fluorescing birds of paradise and now forehead teeth in ratfish

Kate Wong @katewong.bsky.social · Sep 4

Behold the gloriously weird Spotted Ratfish. It has teeth on its forehead for sex. The teeth line a cartilaginous appendage called a tenaculum that in males can be erected and used to grasp a female during mating 🧪

Dr. Karly E. Cohen @karlycohen.bsky.social · Sep 4

New paper is officially out!
Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth.

www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 4

Supraindividual know-how is (pretty much) everywhere.

Dr. Abigail Desmond @abigaildesmond.bsky.social · Jan 13

Ursula K. LeGuin on technology

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 1

Ah, for any linguist questions I would have to refer to the other authors. I am a few things maybe, but certainly not a linguist :-)

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Sep 1

I think a few years ago I would have reacted the same. Now, I am excited about these things - it's all part of a bigger enterprise. For me, for example, it'll link well w. a current project on the evolution of cultural complexity, with Magnus Enquist. But sure, I get that this is not for everyone.

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Reposted by Claudio Tennie

Alan McElligott @amcell.bsky.social · Sep 1

2025. The Phoneme as a Cognitive Tool. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Phoneme as a Cognitive Tool

Phonemes—the basic sound units of language—function as cognitive tools that shape and extend human thinking. This article explores how phonemes are biologically grounded yet culturally variable, play....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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