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Joanna Bagniewska

@joannabagniewska.com
12K followers 2.4K following 1.3K posts

Lecturer in Environmental Science at Oxford Uni @ox.ac.uk @lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk Fellow at @kelloggoxford.bsky.social Zoologist, science communicator, 🇵🇱 in 🇬🇧. #AcademicSky 🧪 I write books, buy them! linktr.ee/jbagniewska

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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 22h
Insect declines threaten wildlife far beyond insect world. Apart from being food, insects provide other species with homes, protection, chemical defence and sanitation - to name a few things. Great review article by @r-cooke.bsky.social with BEAUTIFUL visuals. 🧪🪳 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Visuals demonstrating the following:

Many freshwater fish eat insects
Parrots nest in termite mounds
Chimpanzees use insects on wounds
Poisonous frogs get toxins from ants and beetles.

73% of studied vertebrate species eat invertebrates
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Point Blue Conservation Science @pointblue.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🦉🧪🌎 The Palomarin spring banding summary is here! The season brought spring migrants, the return of summer residents, and a few exciting captures! Some highlights: Black-headed Grosbeaks, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and juvenile Black Phoebes. Learn more: shorturl.at/X7ymm
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 29/09/2026
A nice surprise from Google for #FatBearWeek! 🐻 Vote for your favourite chonky bear here: explore.org/fat-bear-week 🧪
Google game with a bear when you search for "fat bear week"
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 29/09/2026
What have ants ever done for us? "Green roofs, living walls, biophilic cities: we talk about these as though pairing architecture with living tissue were a modern idea. It isn't. Ants had it first." Ants, architecture and ambition - read more here: livingarchitecturemonitor.com/articles/bef... 🧪🐜🌍
livingarchitecturemonitor.com
Before Green Roofs, There Were Ant Hills
In this biomimetic piece, learn what yellow meadow ants can teach designers about green roofs.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 24/09/2026
The nerdiest, most beautiful scarves for your labbed ones. Loved ones.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 23/09/2026
You've heard of Wordle and Squardle - but do you know Birdle? Six guesses to identify the bird of the day. Nine games per day based on the species' geography. 🧪 🪶 🐦 www.play-birdle.com/af/
Screenshot of the game birdle
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🌴 Scott Zona, Ph.D. 🌴 @scottzona.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Leonotis has bright, nectar-rich, tubular flowers that are sunbird favs. Pollen is placed on the top of the head. When cultivated in the Americas, hummingbirds visit & pollinate the flowers in the same way (but hovering). 📷: Nectarinia famosa by Ruperl CCBYNC4 #ornithophily #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
Photo of a metallic blue-green bird perching on the bare, erect stems between the dense verticillasters of orange, tubular flowers. The bird is inserting its beak into a flower.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 23/09/2026
What time of the year is it? It's FAT BEAR WEEK! It's been so popular that their website is having issues - but check periodically to see if you can vote for the chonkiest chonk on @fatbearweek.bsky.social 🐻 🧪 explore.org/fat-bear-wee...
A bear with a perfectly round butt.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 16/09/2026
🐺 Wolves eat blueberries (this is not news). But it turns out that going through a wolf gut helps the berry seeds germinate - and disperse. A tasty win-win. 🧪 Article: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article... 🫐 Also, footage of wolves chomping on berries: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Qz...
youtube.com
First-ever footage of wolves eating blueberries in Northern Minnesota
YouTube video by Voyageurs Wolf Project
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 14/09/2026
The GCSE in Natural History has been long brewing - and here are our thoughts on it. This qualification is especially pressing now, in the light of the climate catastrophe and a crisis of mental well-being among young people. Doing fieldwork and being closer to nature can only benefit society. 🧪🌏🍃
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 11/09/2026
Today, I put on my science communication hat and talk about being a good citizen of the social media community. #scicomm #AcademicSky
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 09/09/2026
Our cohort of @lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk Ecological Survey Techniques students are saying hello to a Natterer's bat at Wytham Woods as part of their field methods training. PSA: don't handle bats without a license (or without gloves). 🧪🦇
A bat sitting on a gloved hand, with people in the background.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 07/09/2026
A huge loss to the botanical community. @drmgoeswild.bsky.social was an incredibly talented science communicator and a wonderful colleague. My 3yo corresponded with him, and said that "her friend Finn wants to be a BOTTOMIST, like Dr M". 🧪🥬
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 04/09/2026
The IgNobel for Biomechanics goes to @matildabrindle.bsky.social, @stuwest.bsky.social and C. Talbot for a precise definition of kissing (provided in the comment below). That's well and good, but I think Dr Brindle's work on non-reproductive sex behaviours should be getting an IgNobel too. 🧪💋
Black-tailed prairie dogs "kissing." Photo by Brocken Inaglory, Wikimedia CommonsA female Toque macaque (Macaca sinica) with baby at Katagamuwa sanctuary. Photo: Senthi Aathavan Senthilverl, Wikimedia Commons
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 04/09/2026
🧪 Free lecture hosted by @lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk: 📅 Sep 7, 6pm 🪲 Bugs in the (Eco)system Prof. Owen Lewis from @biology.ox.ac.uk explores the consequences of altered insect communities for the diversity and functioning of ecosystems in an era of rapid climate and land-use change. Link below.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 02/09/2026
Darwin having a good ol' moan in his letters. So rel. #AcademicSky 🧪
I loathe, I abhor the sea, & all ships which sail on it.
I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before.
I am very tired, very stomachy& hate nearly the whole world.
I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything.
I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees.

- Charles Darwin in various letters between 1836 and 1862.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 15/08/2026
We saw Jason Arday in the news every day for the past two weeks, linked to a misconduct case that should have been handled internally. I don't remember any academic getting such sustained media attention, not even Nobel Prize winners. This is hounding at its absolute lowest. RIP. #academicsky
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 14/08/2026
Monkeys make friends with other species, and that can tell us a lot about how keeping pets came about. Great article by @cyrilgrueter.bsky.social et al., reporting friendly primate interactions with a whopping 55 non-primate species! 🧪🐒🐕 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Examples of affiliative interspecific interactions involving non-human primates. a Adult female white-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator) monkey grooming an adult female black-handed spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) in Santa Rosa, Costa Rica; photo by Nicholas Chapoy. b Capped langur (Trachypithecus pileatus) grooming a Phayre's leaf monkey (Trachypithecus phayrei) in Satchari National Park Bangladesh; photo by Sabit Hasan. c A tufted gray langur (Semnopithecus priam) stroking a grizzled giant squirrel (Ratufa macroura) in Yala National Park, Sri Lanka; photo by Senthi Aathavan Senthilverl, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. d Stump-tailed macaques (Macaca arctoides) grooming a domestic dog at Khao Tao Mo temple, Thailand; photo by Neil Challis. e Female northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys) holding a mouse at the Shanghai Zoo, China; photo by Cyril Grueter. f Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) mounting and riding on the back of a sika deer (Cervus nippon) at Yakushima, Japan; photo by Alexandre Bonnefoy and Cédric Sueur. g Young juvenile black-and-white snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti) playing on a domestic pig at Xiangguqing, Yunnan Golden Monkey National Park, China; photo by Yanpeng Li. h) Ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) grooming a southern bamboo lemur (Hapalemur meridionalis) in Mandena, Madagascar; photo by Timothy Eppley A tufted gray langur (Semnopithecus priam) stroking a grizzled giant squirrel.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 13/08/2026
If that lecturing gig I do falls through, there's still modeling (not the computer kind) to fall back on... #AcademicSky
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 03/08/2026
Echo chambers Inaccuracy tolerance LLMs replacing search engines & encyclopedias ... and other possible effects of creeping normality of AI. #AcademicSky
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 22/07/2026
🧪 🐵🫂
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 22/07/2026
🧪 Investigate biodiversity in urban green spaces 🎓 Support graduate access 🦊 Take videos of cute species Just a regular day in the office at @ox.ac.uk ♥️ @biodivoxford.bsky.social #academicsky
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 14/07/2026
Read my book, remain scarred for life. I present the tongue-eating louse. 🧪 😝 👀
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 14/07/2026
Geologists have a higher death rate in movies than Sean Bean 💀 Of the 202 geologists in 141 movies released between 1919 and 2023, 69 die or are found dead, resulting in mortality rate of about a third. Movie geologists were mainly male, white and in khaki. 🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Geologists on the silver screen—the sequel
As geologists, our interest is piqued when geological processes—with varying degrees of accuracy—are portrayed in movies and especially when a geologist unexpectedly appears on screen, even in a mino...
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 06/07/2026
Orangutans are solitary species, so, theoretically, opportunities for early socialisation are scarce. What do orangutan mums do? They go out of their way to arrange playdates for their kids. Research by @oddjacobson.bsky.social @bjjbarrett.bsky.social et al: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧪🌏🐵
Female orangutan with her young baby in Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, Sabah, Malaysia; photo by Bernard Dupont, Wikimedia Commons
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 29/06/2026
Could be a good early stage #scicomm opportunity. #AcademicSky 🧪
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 23/06/2026
It's been ten years since the #Brexit referendum. I'm still waiting to find a single positive thing that came out of it. Anyone? #academicsky
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 19/06/2026
Do you know about the Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social? A great resource for nature-related collaborative work, with biodiversity literature and images made publicly available. www.biodiversitylibrary.org Drawing of a dusky titi monkey, from Description des mammifères. 🧪🌍🪶🦊
Drawing of a dusky titi monkey, from Description des mammifères, Paris: Le Muséum,1843
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 10/06/2026
I will speak. It shall be entertaining. 🪧The Animal Butt Compendium: the ABC of Zoological Rear Ends 🍑From species that breathe through their bums, to those using their derrieres as weapons and ones that communicate through farting - there's something for everyone. 📆 1 Jul, London 🎟️ Tickets below.
Common rain frog bottom. Image from https://www.youtube.com/@pampermoony
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 08/06/2026
Oh look, a girl spider, and her private bits look like the most adorable fox pawprint! 🐾 🦊 Yes, arachnologists spend way too much time looking at epigyne (🕷️ lady parts). Mammalogists, on the other hand, get excited when something looks like a track. 🧪
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 05/06/2026
The Nature Festival is back, courtesy of @biodivoxford.bsky.social 🥬 Oxford folk, ready yourselves for the last week of June, with nature walks, talks, workshops and activities (including those from the @oxon-mammal-group.bsky.social). The programme caters to all ages. 🧪🌏 thenaturefestival.org
thenaturefestival.org
Home - The Nature Festival
A celebration of nature in Oxford. The Nature Festival is a collaborative, volunteer-led event celebrating nature in Oxford and the people working to protect and restore it. The festival’s main […]
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 05/06/2026
Exciting stuff - British pounds are getting a revamp and will feature wildlife. You can pick two animals in each category (mammals, birds and what looks like "creatures without eyelashes"). Vote here until July 3: www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/he... 🧪💷🌏
The shortlist

Mammals
    bottlenose dolphin
    brown hare
    European hedgehog 
    grey seal 
    pine marten 
    red fox 

	
Birds
    Atlantic puffin 
    barn owl 
    common kingfisher 
    Eurasian curlew 
    great spotted woodpecker  
    white-tailed eagle

	
Amphibians, insects and fish
    Atlantic salmon
    basking shark
    buff-tailed bumblebee
    common frog
    emperor dragonfly
    marsh fritillary butterfly
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 03/06/2026
🪶 Birds masturbate. 🦜 This is normal, and not (as often is believed) a maladaptive behaviour only found in captivity. 🍑 Pet bird owners - chill, and let your budgie have some fun. 🧪 Study of masturbation in 120 bird species, by @matildabrindle.bsky.social: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Yellow budgerigar, photo by Frances76 (Wikimedia Commons)
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 22/05/2026
Have you heard of OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer? It's a great tool for visualising how all biodiversity in the world is related. And since it's #BiodiversityDay, well... Find yourself a friend whose love language is "I sponsored a slime mold for you". www.onezoom.org 🧪🌏 🦊🐦🐝 #biodiversity
A OneZoom node saying: Dictyostelium purpureum, sponsored for Dr Joanna BagniewskaA snapshot of OneZoom, showing different taxonomic groups.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 20/05/2026
🧪 In a study, bumblebee queens were overwintered in refrigerated test tubes - but an experimental mishap led to four tubes accumulating water. 🐝 Now we know that bumblebee 👸 can survive being submerged for a week - which makes sense, because in the wild their burrows may get flooded. 🌍 #WorldBeeDay
Common eastern bumblebee, Bombus impatiens, on a plant. Photo by Mousebelt (Wikimedia Commons)
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 18/05/2026
🕷️You're a smallish spider with big decoy ambitions 🕸️You patiently weave bits and bobs into your web to camouflage yourself, or to appear bigger 🏵️Your elaborate web decorations (stabilimenta) are made of delicate silk What do you get called? A "TRASHLINE orb weaver". 🤦‍♀️ Arachnologists... 🧪🌍
Trashline Orbweaver - Cyclosa walckenaeri - by Judy Gallagher (Wikimedia Commons)Cyclosa octotuberculata spider on a trashline, source: Wikimedia CommonsWeb debris spider (Cyclosa insulana) making patterns on a web - Charles J Sharp, Wikimedia Commons
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 15/05/2026
Future conservationists - here's a FREE resource to get you started on your career. Launching your career in wildlife conservation - an online course training.wildteam.org.uk/course/launc... 🧪🌍🪶 #AcademicSky
training.wildteam.org.uk
Launching Your Career in Wildlife Conservation
From exploring the right role and building your competencies to preparing a strong application, performing at interview, and assessing an offer. This course can also be used as a training aid for anyo...
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 08/05/2026
The first species to be named after David Attenborough (in 1993) is Attenborosaurus conybeari. The Attenborosaurus is an extinct marine reptile from the Early Jurassic. Over 50 species have been named after Sir David - who turns 100 today. Happy birthday! 🧪🦕🌍
Life restoration of the Attenborosaurus with Asteroceras obtusum Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.ca/)
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 07/05/2026
Have you voted yet? @ianopolous.bsky.social and I have! #Oxford #election 🗳️
Two good looking people at a polling station.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 02/05/2026
#academicsky 🧪
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 30/04/2026
Your name in Landsat, courtesy of NASA: science.nasa.gov/specials/you... Addictive. 🧪🛰️
JOANNA spelled in satellite images of land forms
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 22/04/2026
It's #EarthDay, so here's an invite to a topical (and free!) event. 🥬Lessons in resilience: Nature, heritage and sustainability - a panel discussion 📆 6 May, 17.30-18.30 📍The Hub, @kelloggoxford.bsky.social What can nature and our shared past teach us about surviving change? Come and find out. 🧪
Trees viewed from below.
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Andy Powell @mrandypowell.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
What larks! Howling mice, self-decapitating slugs and butt-poison-firing beetles. All in @joannabagniewska.com's modern bestiary and another cracking @pubsci.bsky.social.
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PubSci (Science in the Pub) @pubsci.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
IanVisits rates it one of the "Top things to do in London" tomorrow — so grab your ticket for @joannabagniewska.com's talk on beasts, bestiaries, and "crazy-but-true" creatures which wouldn't be out of place alongside the hippogriffs of a medieval manuscript! pubsci-april2026.eventbrite.co.uk
pubsci-april2026.eventbrite.co.uk
15th April – The Modern Bestiary with Joanna Bagniewska
Meet some of the weirdest, wildest, most wondrous living creatures that share this amazing planet with us!
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 08/04/2026
Now, was the grebe hungry, or was it just sick of the chiffchaff yelling its own name over and over and over again? #birdsaredicks 🧪🪶🌍🐦
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 30/03/2026
The Modern Bestiary: like the medieval bestiary, but with less moralising and more wildlife. Also more butts, sex and grossness. I will be talking about bestiaries in general and The Modern Bestiary in particular at @pubsci.bsky.social in London on 15 Apr. Booking link below. #SciComm 🧪🪶🦊 #BookSky
Joanna reading The Modern Bestiary to a dead bear.
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Meghan Bartels @meghanbartels.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
These snakes are both more organized and more toxic than me: 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/thes...
scientificamerican.com
These snakes steal poison from their prey—here's how they know they have enough
Snakes that gain poisons from eating toads seem to know when they’re toxic by keeping track of what they last ate
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The Linnean Society of London @linneansociety.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
📣 Call for writers! Are you an early career researcher? University student? Science communicator? Know someone who is? We're always looking for new Guest Bloggers to contribute to our journal blog The Paper Trail! Have a read below, or check out our vacancies page to apply. buff.ly/7IohkLQ
A screenshot of the Paper Trail blog series webpage, showing four blog thumbnails with striking photographs of different animals. The first is a brightly coloured spider for the blog "The Politics of Taxonomy - Tangled in a Web of Inequalities". The second is of two mouse lemurs looking sweetly up to the left, over the blog "Out on a Limb: How Primates Jump in the Trees". The third is of an elephant emerging from behind a tree in tall grass in soft lighting, above the blog "Elephant Poo is a World Class Fertilizer... Sometimes". The final one is a blue-lit beetle, proud and mysterious, almost mirroring the posture and form of the elephant to its right, above the blog "Ghosts of the Past: How DNA Reveals an Extinct Island Lineage".
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Oxford Clarion @oxfordclarion.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
3D-printed bird boxes are being trialled at Blenheim Palace in an attempt to provide more appealing habitats for marsh tits, whose numbers have halved since the 1970s. The boxes are made out of mycelium (mushroom substance) and shaped to dissuade predators. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...
nationalgeographic.com
Is the bird nest of the future 3D-printed and made of mushrooms?
As ancient, hollowed trees disappear in England, one researcher and his team are engineering prosthetic nests to provide an alternative home for endangered birds.
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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 23/03/2026
"Everything is old in Europe" - snails from 140 MYA at London Paddington paving slabs. 🧪 🐌 🚇
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