Brenda de Groot

My advisor is answering questions about almost anything you want to know, such as about his research in proboscis monkeys! Yes you can submit in English 🐒

New postdoc positions at the (DISI-affiliated) Center for Possible Minds at Indiana University. Looking for scholars interested in interdisciplinary research on the nature of biological, artificial, and collective intelligence. Please share widely! indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/29547

In response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students, Kyoto University has announced its policy of allowing those affected to transfer japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/genera…

I'm on Bluesky now! bsky.app/profile/brenda…

Animal cruelty ordered by the one and only: the sickening US administration. Will the rest of humanity do something or not? Until that happens this is my last post here.

Not to sound cheesy, but DISI was life-changing for me—and a lot of fun. Can’t think of a better way to spend three weeks of your summer, so.. consider this call if this calls to you!

Well, at least we debunked the idea of human supremacy today.

@evan_westra Probably redundant because you’ve considered it already, but I’d definitely put some papers from Frans de Waal in there, on empathy, morality and/or fairness. And of course from Birte Wrage, Susana Monsó and Kristin Andrews, but again: good chance you already covered those! 😉

The NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program is thrilled to be hosting an online talk by Natale Jacewicz on October 22 at noon ET on why and how to consider animal welfare in wildlife management. The talk is free and open to all. Please RSVP and share widely! nyu.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

You go girl

@MariskaKret @tomhanks @CoPAN_Leiden @LeidenPsy One should not underestimate the power of great bu—apes! Great apes.

I'm in a podcast with @tomhanks and while he is talking about adoration, I'm talking about butts.😄🙃😅🤣🤔🤨🙄🤥🤓npr.org/2024/09/17/125… @CoPAN_Leiden @LeidenPsy

@Zoe_Sadokierski Look at them sitting there all neatly on their shelves. It's like.. feathery books, but better.

Afternoon well spent, hanging out with some pigeons and their carers.

@ERoseEngland @WeAnimals ...and despite the fact that they are sentient and incredibly sensitive beings who were snatched from their families, robbed of their homes and freedom, and innocently sentenced to a life in a torture prison.

At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, an attorney for a company that profits from selling monkeys to research labs revealed that U.S. experimenters are knowingly using monkeys captured from the wild, despite the potential for their wild origin to confound research results & the fact that wild monkeys are excellent reservoirs for zoonotic diseases. peta.org/media/news-rel…

@09Kawaguchi @WallerBridget I have langur (Trachypithecus) infant faces--will shoot you an email now!

📢Call for collaboration Do you have primate face images🐵? We are starting a project exploring the form and function of 'babyness' in primate faces. Contact us if you can help! yurikawaguchi.weebly.com/baby-face-proj… @WallerBridget

@geladas_bridges @IntJPrimatology @TheLeakeyFndtn Oh my, I loved that article! Congrats on the amazing work, I wish I was there to say it in person!

🚨 Presenting our new publication link.springer.com/article/10.100… on @IntJPrimatology at the conference of the Italian Society for Zoology (UZI) in Pisa! 🐒 @TheLeakeyFndtn geladas and baboons interspecies interactions!

If you'd ask me, the man deserved therapy, not a trophy. We may partially blame it on the Zeitgeist, but I find the casual exploitation of animals very hard to ignore.

As you read on, you find that Skinner’s project nearly failed if it wasn't for a young man who proposed using dogs in torpedoes (p. 29). Followed by disturbing descriptions and pictures of how the pigeons were trained, and more stories of war animal applications.

And of course, a speciesist fallacy by implying that the ethical concern of pigeons ("lower creatures") is not even worthy of discussion here.

A statement riddled with fallacies: an appeal to fear by suggesting ethics are irrelevant in war, and a false dichotomy by implying we can only care about ethics in peace.

I just learned that B.F. Skinner posthumously won an Ig Nobel Peace Prize for experiments on the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide their flight path. How exploiting innocent animals to kill humans can win a prize, let alone a peace prize, is beyond me🧶

Skinner's own thoughts on the moral matter: "The ethical question of our right to convert a lower creature into an unwitting hero is a peace-time luxury" (p. 28) appstate.edu/~steelekm/clas…