George Hodgson
@ghodgson.bsky.social
700 followers 360 following 46 posts
Postdoctoral fellow at City University of Hong Kong, studying sociality and animal behaviour... Fond of fish, molerats and trees 🐄
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Very excited to announce that our latest feral cattle paper “Strategic third-party interventions in feral ungulate affiliation” is out today in @royalsociety.org Proceedings of the Royal Society B royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... by myself, Kate Flay, Tania Perroux & @amcell.bsky.social
Photograph of a brown feral cattle grooming the back of another cow, with a pink and grey tongue sticking out of her mouth
Reposted by George Hodgson
Happening in 1 week: October 23rd, from 4 to 5.30pm Hong Kong time (UTC+8) or 10 to 11.30 Central European time (UTC+2)! Still time to register using the QR code on the poster below 😄
Looking forward to sharing the outcome of my four years of PhD research on the Hong Kong feral cattle 🐂
Reposted by George Hodgson
Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.

Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology
Reposted by George Hodgson
🦅PhD position 🦅 in my new group at @fbm-unil.bsky.social in Switzerland, studying how the social and resource landscapes shape the learning process for soaring flight. Deadline: Oct 30. Pls repost! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...
Golden eagle on the nest in Finland (by O. Karlin)
Reposted by George Hodgson
Already one month into my placement at Rothamsted Research and learning more and more about chemical ecology every day! 🌱
Three trays of oilseed-rape(OSR) plants
 The plants in the tray on the right are looking a lot healthier and larger than the other two. The Rothamsted Research site entrance, with a brick sign in front of a large tree and red-brick building.
Reposted by George Hodgson
The naturalist Jane Goodall died today at 91. Hope, she argued, is not merely “passive wishful thinking” but a “crucial survival trait.” Revisit a conversation with Goodall, from 2021: nyer.cm/F55JtsS
An image of Jane Goodall and a chimpanzee, from 1965. Photo courtesy CBS Photo Archive / Getty.
Reposted by George Hodgson
TRAVEL AWARDS - Apply for a travel award to support your trip, accommodation and registration! Application guidelines on www.isbe2026.com
Reposted by George Hodgson
#ISBE2026 Call for Abstracts is now open! Submit your abstract by 15 December 2025 on www.isbe2026.com

@behavecol.bsky.social
Reposted by George Hodgson
It’s the one year anniversary of ISBE2024 in Melbourne, Australia. So many fond memories. And now it’s time to start thinking about the 2026 congress in beautiful Torino, Italy. For further information, follow @isbe2026.bsky.social or visit isbe2026.com.
Reposted by George Hodgson
The tree you climbed as a child. Gone. The Swifts over your town. Gone. The air you breathe. Polluted. The river. Unsafe.

This is the reality of deregulation.

Cutting protections would mean disaster for nature & our economy.

Our CEO sets out why: rspb.org.uk/whats-happen... 👈
A small flock of Swifts sweep across a clear blue sky, their slim bodies and crescent wings cutting sharply above the roof of a house. A beloved summer sight - and one at risk of disappearing if protections for nature are lost.
Reposted by George Hodgson
Reposted by George Hodgson
My grad student Ashley Staab will be defending her Masters work next week! Cute birds ("the bobs"), cool bioacoustics methods (ohun R package call template analysis, machine learning), & fun results (we can identify which bird called!). Let me know if you want a zoom link: [email protected]
Image showing Ashley Staab's Masters Defense ad ("Identifying individual-level call variation in the northern bobwhite quail"). Pictures of Ashley holding a male bobwhite quail, a male bobwhite next to a spectrogram of his "bob-white" call, logos for the Hobson Lab and University of Cincinnati, and three example plots from Ashley's work (call spectrograms, a heatmap of call similarity, and a boxplot of within/across individual call similarity.
Reposted by George Hodgson
Interested in vocal #communication? How animals provide referential #information about danger? Then see our 🌟NEW🌟 paper by brilliant ANU #PhD student Chun-Chieh Liao out today in @asab.org Animal Behaviour. 🎉👏

#birds #choughs #fieldwork #ECR
With Rob Magrath and Rob Heinsohn
doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
White-winged choughs in Canberra, Australia - the bird species studied in the newly published work.
Reposted by George Hodgson
For the #ungulates crowd! 🧪🌍 #wildlife
NEW in CJZ:
Harmless tags or hazardous ads? Investigating the potential for ear tags to increase predation on neonatal ungulates

✒️ Turnley et al.
🔗 buff.ly/7Dz1HN3 #OpenAccess 🔓
Two pronghorn neonates shortly after birth. Both are fitted with expandable tracking collars but only one fitted with a yellow eartag.
Reposted by George Hodgson
Huntington's disease has been successfully treated for the first time following positive results from a global clinical trial, on which Professor Sarah Tabrizi FRS of UCL's Huntington's Disease Centre was lead scientific advisor:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time
One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.
www.bbc.co.uk
Reposted by George Hodgson
📢 City lizards are more social !
Thrilled to share the first paper from my PhD, out now in #BiologyLetters @royalsocietypublishing.org !

We show that urban lizards are more social than their non-urban counterparts 🦎🏙️🌳🧪

doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

@behavecobie.bsky.social
Three common wall lizards basking next to each other on a stone wall in an urban habitat in Croatia.
Reposted by George Hodgson
🚨 New paper! 🚨

🐒 White-faced capuchins experience high rates of infanticide.

🐒 Infanticide is costly to female reproduction.

🐒 Do females exhibit the Bruce effect (termination of pregnancy) to reduce these costs?

🐒 Spoiler: Nope!

Read more ▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Female capuchins sits on a branch, looking away from the camera. A young capuchin holds onto her back, looking at the camera. Photo: Nick Chapoy
Reposted by George Hodgson
Last month I presented my work on amphibian antipredator behaviour at #Behaviour2025 in Kolkata, India. I met so many cool people and potential future collaborators! Thanks to the organisers for the opportunity to present and to @asab.org and @britishecologicalsociety.org for funding my attendance!
Reposted by George Hodgson
Holy cow, we found a little cow buddy while digging in Great Torrington!
Thanks to all the residents of Castle Street for letting us dig up their beautiful gardens 🐄
#archaeology #cow #greattorrington #excavation @archsengage.bsky.social #publciengagement
Small metal cow shape on open palm Women with brown hair and orange vis jacket excavating a small trench in a walled garden
Reposted by George Hodgson
🇭🇰 🌀 🌧️

Past 24 hour rainfall map to 10.15am Wednesday September 24th.
Interested in the feral cattle of Hong Kong? @tania-perroux.bsky.social and I will be talking about our PhD research next month; for more information and to register, check out the poster below! 👀🐂☀️
@ghodgson.bsky.social and I will present our PhD research on October 23rd, 4 to 5.30pm HK time
Zoom is open for all and in-person attendance is available for staff and students of City University of Hong Kong. Scan the QR code or use the following link to register docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Reposted by George Hodgson
It would signal the the de facto end of nearly all immigration to this country, from those coming to work to those who come for love. It would crater our economy, tear up relationships, remove status from millions of European, result in endless legal battles and leave us as an international pariah.
Reposted by George Hodgson
Reform will apparently pledge today that they'd abolish indefinite leave to remain - including retrospectively, to people already granted it. Obviously this is a moral abomination but it is also a practical and legal impossibility.
Reposted by George Hodgson
Kestrel alert!!! 🪶🌿🚨
A kestrel coming in for a landing on a thin branch A kestrel perched atop a thin vertical branch A kestrel preening its tail feathers A kestrel mid-takeoff from a branch
Reposted by George Hodgson
I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.