Kai Caspar
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nomascus.bsky.social
Kai Caspar
@nomascus.bsky.social
1.3K followers 640 following 260 posts
Zoology lecturer @hhu.de | Armchair biologist | Focus on rodents underground and gibbons in the trees, also one of @themanybirds.bsky.social | Organismic vertebrate biology
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Reposted by Kai Caspar
jdpardo.bsky.social
Burgess-type preservation of Ediacarans. This is perhaps the most important paleo paper you will read in a while.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The terminal Ediacaran Tongshan Lagerstätte from South China - Nature Communications
Here, the authors present Ediacaran fossils from the Tongshan Lagerstätte (South China), including Burgess Shale-type rangeomorphs preserved both with fronds and holdfasts. They use sedimentary and ch...
www.nature.com
November 24, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
ehowaspi.bsky.social
Our New Paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour: 🚨 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! 🦧 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... See 🧵
Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials - Nature Human Behaviour
Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for orangutans to acquire varied diets.
www.nature.com
November 24, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
theskullywaglab.bsky.social
Our lab just published a cool paper on seed-cracking bettongs. Not just any seeds, but some of the hardest seeds out there! Two species in the same genus showing different adaptations to hard biting. Very cool 💀💀🤓🤓 #skull #science academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...
November 20, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
caleyorr.bsky.social
Can't resist a mashup of my music and comparative anatomy interests. Fun fact: though written by Jagger and Richards "Wild Horses" was first released by The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970) before showing up on The RS's Sticky Fingers (1971). #rocknroll #music #anatomy 🧪
youtu.be/MchWI3sLUQo?...
Could “wild horses” drag you away? Quantifying muscular architecture in the forelimbs of extant, non‐domestic equids (Perissodactyla: Equidae)
Equid evolution is characterized by a high diversity of extinct species and morphologies, whereas extant equids share a superficially similar, monodactyl morphology. This inferred musculoskeletal sim...
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 23, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
villesinkkonen.bsky.social
Triassic marine beasts #sciart
November 22, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
royalsocietypublishing.org
Beyond criterion: cognitive flexibility in wild striated caracaras: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... | #BiologyLetters #Behaviour #Cognition #Ecology
November 21, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
wiringthebrain.bsky.social
A global screen for magnetically induced neuronal activity in the pigeon brain www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... - so cool! 🐦🧠
A global screen for magnetically induced neuronal activity in the pigeon brain
How animals detect the Earth’s magnetic field remains a mystery in sensory biology. Despite extensive behavioral evidence, the neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms responsible for magnetic sensin...
www.science.org
November 21, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
judithmank.bsky.social
Team fish - we need your help! We are trying to build a database of all the fish chromosome-scale genomes where sex chromosomes have been identified. Have you build one or some? Do you know someone who has? Can you post the link in the comments? Please spread the word and repost! Thank you!
November 20, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
columboscreens.bsky.social
November 20, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
sabinebegall.bsky.social
New paper out in Mammalian Biology:
Walking backwards, as impractical as it may seem, is mastered by the Ansell's mole-rat (Fukomys anselli). In this study, we showed that mole-rats can walk backwards and forwards with equal ease. This is likely an adaptation to their subterranean habitat.
November 20, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
biodivlibrary.bsky.social
Happy #WorldAnteaterDay! This Giant Anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) #SciArt is by Édouard Traviès for Charles Dessalines d'Orbigny, Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle (1849). Contributed to BHL by @ncsulibraries.bsky.social: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/19538021 🧪 📖 🌎 🐜 #ILoveBHL
An historic illustration of a giant anteater, a brown and black mammal with a long snout and a huge fluffy tail held high.
November 19, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
tetzoo.bsky.social
New at Tetrapod Zoology .... The Life Appearance of Glyptodonts, a remarkable group of giant and anatomically amazing group of extinct armadillos tetzoo.com/blog/2025/11... #mammals
The Life Appearance of Glyptodonts — Tetrapod Zoology
For some time now I’ve been interested in what the glyptodonts – a group of highly modified, large or gigantic armadillos – looked like when alive….
tetzoo.com
November 18, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
dactylioceras.bsky.social
The coelurosaur theropods of the Romualdo formation, early Cretaceous (Aptian) of Brazil: Santanaraptor placidus meets Mirischia asymmetrica

Illustration by Guilherme Gehr

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
November 18, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
lovedalen.bsky.social
✅ RNA?

✅ Ancient RNA?

✅ Ancient RNA from woolly mammoth!

#FossilFriday 🦣 🧪

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
November 14, 2025 at 4:06 PM
nomascus.bsky.social
Excellent write-up of a remarkable exhibition by @fossilhistory.bsky.social - glad I could provide some commentary on it!
November 14, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
drrmiller.bsky.social
Amazing opportunity for a PhD position with the wonderful Dr Megan Lambert in Vienna and her fascinating kea parrots! 10/10 recommend working with Dr Lambert. See advert linked below for more info.
explanimals.bsky.social Gabriella E. Smith @explanimals.bsky.social · 15d
Intrigued by animal innovation and avian cognition? My PI Dr. Megan Lambert is advertising a new shiny PhD position studying innovation in kea parrots! Info attached 🤩🦜
For inquiries: [email protected]
November 14, 2025 at 6:08 AM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
wileyprof.bsky.social
Our special issue on Evolutionary Functions of Consciousness, coedited with Tecumseh Fitch and Adina Roskies, now online royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Contributions by (1) Irina Mikhalevich; (2) Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg; (3) Nicholas Humphrey; (cont'd)
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1939
royalsocietypublishing.org
November 13, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
ecobird.bsky.social
🐦 EcoBird is hiring a Postdoc in animal cognition!

Join us + @themanybirds.bsky.social to investigate innovation & problem-solving in birds.

📅 Start: as early as Jan 2026
🌍 Funded through UGent’s international mobility scheme

More info & how to apply ↓
www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...
Postdoctoral fellow
www.ugent.be
November 13, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
christophvoelter.bsky.social
Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social.
We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures.

All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...
Please share / apply!🙏
Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
www.eva.mpg.de
November 13, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
ctennie.bsky.social
Strong response to recent critiques of the sequence-struggle hypothesis. Chapeau!
johanlind.bsky.social Johan Lind @johanlind.bsky.social · 13d
For this reason, we wrote this comment, published yesterday. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
We reason that 1) their data supports rather than rejects the sequence hypothesis, as monkeys and chimps did not perform with any precision in these sequential tasks. 7/n
November 13, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
jibarrondo.bsky.social
The twisted secret behind a chameleon’s oddball eyes | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪
The twisted secret behind a chameleon’s oddball eyes
Coiled nerves allow the reptiles to move their peepers in multiple directions at once without moving their heads
www.science.org
November 12, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
clattin.bsky.social
These orb-weaver spiders build FAKE SPIDER DECOYS in their webs, potentially to deter predators 🤯 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Cyclosa Menge, 1866 (Araneidae) Orb‐Weavers Build Stabilimenta That Resemble Larger Spiders
The orb-weaving spider Cyclosa longicauda from Peru constructs unique stabilimenta from detritus and silk that visually resemble a larger spider. This previously undescribed behavior likely functions....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 12, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
brglilly.bsky.social
Baby Limba tasting some grass #PaigntonZoo #kingcolobus #monkey #primates
November 11, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Kai Caspar
macroecoevoale.bsky.social
My advice for #2025SVP would be aimed not to students, who are excellent in our society and I am sure will do great but on senior academics. During Q&A, please resist the urge to grandstand or grill. Be polite, constructive, and supportive. That’s how we build a stronger, kinder community. #SVP2025
societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social Society of Vertebrate Paleontology @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social · 16d
Many of our student attendees will be giving their first talk or poster this meeting! What advice you give them to help make it the best experience possible?

#2025SVP
November 10, 2025 at 8:00 PM