iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Ivo Jacobs

Steve Brusatte @stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

🚨Postdoc job alert: Come work with my paleontology & evolution group in Edinburgh! Researcher in Cognitive Evolution Over Deep Time. You'll study how brains & neurons have evolved over time, and predict neuron count in extinct species! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTC355/p...

jobs.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time at The University of Edinburgh

Apply for the Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

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The Anatomical Record @anatrecord.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

🦖✨ New issue alert, spotlighting a timely and fascinating scientific debate: How should we infer cognition in extinct dinosaurs? Two recent papers dive headfirst into this debate — and they do not agree. Full issue here: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19328494...

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

So cool! They've sometimes been described as pyrophilic but without much data to back it up. With some systematic observations, it would be a nice study.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Starlings are too brilliant for this world. #photography #birds

A common starling seen from the side walking away from the camera through a field of flowers and grass with dew drops. The morning light reveals its brilliantly coloured plumage.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Help, how do I put my crow back together? #photography #birds

A carrion crow seen from the side in a stubble field. It has just finished scratching its head and is in the middle of retracting a foot, captured against its back in this shot, giving it an odd posture.

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Gabriella E. Smith, PhD @explanimals.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Dream PhD opening! Innovation in wild falcons! Application deadline Aug 1🦅

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Indeed, and if they would really offer gifts, they would present them while you're there - not in your absence.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

How do birds respond to active fire? This has been studied in various fire-prone regions (brief review included), but less elsewhere. Here, I observed Swedish birds mainly ignoring fire, and some even continued singing. Out now in @ecol-evol.bsky.social 🧪🌍 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The Presence and Behaviour of Birds at Two Prescribed Fires in Sweden

Shifting fire regimes pose immediate threats to animal conservation. Swedish birds appear to mostly ignore prescribed fire, and some species even continue to sing. Behavioural plasticity towards fire...

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The Presence and Behaviour of Birds at Two Prescribed Fires in Sweden

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

A fledgling carrion crow delighted to receive a piece of roadkill from a parent #photography #birds

The fledgling seen from the side, with distinctive pale eyes and pink inside the beak, turning its head with beak open, while the parent places food in its beak

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Konrad Lorenz Research Center @klf-univienna.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

📣 Interested in a 4-year postdoc in the movement ecology group? @univie.ac.at is recruiting outstanding female researchers through the E-STEEM programme. @pesumas.bsky.social is a registered host and welcomes applications from potential candidates. careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e...

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

New preprint out!🧪🌍🔥 I observed 17 bird species at two prescribed fires in Sweden. They appeared to mostly ignore the fire, and some (such as this skylark) even sang through the smoke - an important comparison with birds from fire-prone regions (reviewed here). www.authorea.com/users/102018...

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Egyptian gosling, nature's mowing machines #photography #birds

An Egyptian gosling feeding on grass and flowers, two of its siblings napping in the background

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

I may have misunderstood, but I thought you were implying my unfamiliarity with the literature, and I certainly didn't mean to do so towards you.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Completely agreed. Regarding dinosaur cognition, tool use is much harder to infer than some other behaviours, and other aspects (e.g. neuroanatomy, physiology) leave more evidence while still informing cognitive reconstructions, which is why I believe tool use to be mostly irrelevant in this debate.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Then that we disagree on. I'm familiar with that literature and that's my conclusion. Does a sand-throwing antlion use the same cognitive abilities as a screwdriver-using human? I think the underlying cognition of these tool-use behaviours are vastly different.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

It's absolutely fine to disagree about its use as a framing device, or the hypothesis in general, but I object to their inaccurate portrayal of our arguments. We highlighted points of agreement in our paper.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Yes, because we know from living systems that the mere fact of tool use, by itself and further unexamined, does not reveal much about cognition, and tool use can arise through many factors that are particularly hard to disentangle in long extinct animals.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Hard to say, but there are many things to consider. An inability to manipulate objects or lack of a nervous system, for instance.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Sorry, I should have phrased that better. The EBH is used to frame new approaches and evidence in hopes of moving this question forward. Was it your impression that it's central in our paper? That section barely touches on the arguments made by Caspar et al., which we even cite only once there.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Take locomotion, for instance. It's a crucial aspect to inform reconstructions of embodied cognition, and one that draws on many more lines of measurable evidence than tool use (especially when sporadic and involving perishable materials tens of millions of years ago). Trace fossils can inform both.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Our paper doesn't focus on the EBH at all. We merely use it - a hypothesis - to frame the debate and offer testable predictions. In my opinion, the core disagreement is about what brains are for, what cognition is, and why it evolves.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

That is indeed my aim and I didn't intend to go into detail of what's just one example. The tool use issue, which we do disagree about on several fronts, is minor compared to other issues.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

I agree with your points on paleo and best guesses. To answer your question with an example, based on neuroanatomy it would be extremely unlikely that the earliest sponges had visual model-based cognition, while that's more likely for the earliest birds.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

The way I see it, these phrases express different degrees of likelihood, which is a crucial marker when making inferences.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

I have, and it's a complex tool to wield. Regardless, there's a big difference between assuming and confidently predicting.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Agreed about the nuance. Here, you make a confident prediction that's not reasonably falsifiable while at the same time lamenting that too many unfalsifiable assumptions are being made.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

In this context, that the basic binary distinction of tool user or not does not say much about (dinosaur) cognition, which instead can be better informed through other kinds of data and testable hypotheses.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Exactly, which is why I'm agnostic to that question, which is not an informative or relevant one to begin with. Just because T. rex had powerful jaws, it may still have used tools for various purposes, but it's unlikely there will ever be any evidence for or against it.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Fully agreed! We work with labs that do just that, while testing cognitive performance of varous taxa (including reptiles), to get a more complete picture encompassing both fields

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Again, our paper speaks for itself just fine, but I take issue with how it's misrepresented by you, which is why I wanted to clarify our points. If you don't want to discuss it more, that's fine by me, but now readers can see what we actually claim.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

The point, as said, is to provide a more accurate, complete picture of our paper. I could edit the review as standalone if it helps. After our review, not much changed in your paper, which remains inaccurate and condescending - including the pile of straw men.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Thanks, then this is probably relevant indeed

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Sorry if it does - that was obviously not my intention. I figured it might work fine because there's no character limit.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Indeed, which makes one wonder how you can "confidently predict that a hypercarnivorous species like T. rex would have no need for tools"

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Please note that the arguments described as ours here are not actually our arguments

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

We are aware of that, and it doesn't counter our actual arguments. We simply claim that pallial or telencephalic neuron numbers are the currently most reliable brain metric proxy for cognitive performance, especially in birds and primates, which are the most extensively studied.

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Reposted by Ivo Jacobs

Gabriella E. Smith, PhD @explanimals.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

How do curiosity and surprise intersect following a violation of expectation? Read our paper here🔥 @auersperga.bsky.social @ivojacobs.bsky.social @elifduran.bsky.social

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

New paper out! 🧪 On reconstructing dinosaur cognition through contemporary cognitive science - a primer on the function of neurons and cognition, the role of extant animals, thermobiology, tools, arms races, foraging, and model-based cognition. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A graph comparing the number of neurons in the telencephalon of reptiles, birds, and two estimates for T. rex. Even the lowest of these estimates suggests the telencephalic neuron count of T. rex to be similar to that of a pygmy falcon or blackbird - several times more than the largest telencephalic neuron count of extant reptiles.

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Magic, thermal imaging, and birds - it's got everything!

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Thrilled to be among the winners! 🪶📷🔥🌏

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Association for Fire Ecology @afe-fireecology.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 AFE Photo Contest! 🔥🎉Read each photo's caption and see all the photos that were submitted this year by searching Photo Contest 2025 (or the name of the photo) at fireecology.org/photo-gallery (1/7)

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Marina Papadopoulou @marinapapa.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

📢We have a brilliant #PhD opportunity on collective animal behaviour across vertebrates! Deadline early 2026 so plenty of time to prepare, feel free to reach out for more info if you are interested in applying 👀 All details below👇

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Chris Krupenye @chriskrupenye.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

🚨Job Alert plz RT! Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition! We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals Open-rank apply.interfolio.com/178146

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Carina Nebel @carinanebel.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Interested in #RaptorResearch and #MovementEcology? 🧪 The #AnimalEcology Lab at @utu.fi has an open #PhDposition! We’ll be tagging WTEs with cutting-edge #GPS devices to study their early-life journeys. Curious to learn more? See the advert: shorturl.at/HMZ84 #PhDOpening #PhDChat #BioLogging

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