David Christopher Hopkinson

This really was a fun day, and it was great to see my students’ work in action at a zoo. I look forward to doing this again with the next cohort! @capelmanor @RoyalAgUni @HertsZoo #AnimalScience #AnimalManagement #Zoology #ZooScience #EnvironmentalEnrichment

Ecological Niche Modeling Tutorial with R 🌍 Covers the basics with presence data cleaning, raster processing, variable selection, modeling and projection 👇 🔗 Online: bit.ly/48v2GgQ 📄 PDF: bit.ly/3C4pBDC #Ecology #Biodiversity #Modeling #OpenScience #GIS

Last week, we had the amazing opportunity to celebrate our animal management higher education students! There's still time to apply - Clearing is open if you want to start studying with us this year. Learn more and apply now via UCAS: hubs.ly/Q02QzpQf0

Why did mammals and birds both evolve huge brains? Mathias Osvath, Pavel Nemec @WitmerLab & me propose a new theory, centered on endothermy. Warm bloodedness requires more food, which requires more smarts to find it. In other words: thought for food! sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Wonderful news! Great to have more study subjects for our #Beaver project at @capelmanor in which we are assessing the effects of this specific family on the area as #EcosystemEngineers. I’m excited to see what insights we uncover. Watch this space! 🦫 #Conservation #Ecology

It was great to don the cap and gown once again as I graduated from @AngliaRuskin (@ARU_AHESS) with my PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education this week. I even got a video clip! Now it all feels official, and I’m proud to be an alumnus of this fantastic university.

Excited to announce the publication of my PhD fieldwork. Studying the role of reptiles as scavengers and the implications for #rewilding. 🦎🪰🐀onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

Very pleased to share that I am now a qualified university lecturer. PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education! Thank you to the staff of @ARU_AHESS @AngliaRuskin for making the course so interesting. Would recommend to anyone! #ARU #ARUProud #PGCert #HigherEducation

Birds! Progress is happening! One year to get it finished and off to @PeterHubbardHC @MarinerBooks...

My latest book - A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils - is at the printers & due out this autumn with a US edition from @NMNH & a UK edition from @NHM_London. It tells the story of dino discoveries & changing views on their biology through the lens of some of my favourite fossils

Great to attend the Research Presentation Day 2024 at @ColchesterZoo this week. Excellent talks from students representing various universities! Of course, whilst there I visited my old rhino study subjects as well! 🦏 @capelmanor @RoyalAgUni #ZooScience #ConservationBiology

Just back home from a great day at Colchester Zoo celebrating the amazing research projects completed by @ARUWrittle and @ARU_Biology students (among others) today. Had to find the #reptiles too! @AngliaRuskin @ColchesterZoo #ARUProud

Great to be attending the @EuropeTurtle conference at @ARUWrittle. Some very interesting talks delivered, and wonderful to be back at Writtle catching up with old colleagues. @AmoryJonathan @wildveitch @stevoallain #Tortoise #Turtle #Conservation #AnimalWelfare

Now it’s my tenrec Mira’s turn on the grass! 🦔 She does a good demonstration of the flehmen response in that first video; I’ll probably use that in one of my lectures if I teach anatomy and physiology again next year. #Tenrec #AnimalScience #Zoology #FlehmenResponse

Lovely day for this one to be slithering around the garden. 🐍 I always like to let Mally on the grass when the weather is like this! ☀️

Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant bbc.in/3JIND7L

What a week… Final PGCHE assignment submitted. 📝 Bulk of my marking finished. ✅ And I passed an observation of one of my lectures, with my teaching style meeting expectations! 😁 Now time to relax…

Did you know the Barrio’s frog, along with the northern and southern Darwin’s frogs are the only known living members of the Rhinodermatidae? These two species also face severe threats to their survival. Find out more in @OfficialZSL's blog: hubs.ly/Q02s4NkY0

This is really sad news. Otto made an excellent contribution to @ColchesterZoo’s successful rhino breeding programme and was a good study subject to observe in my research. He had a lovely personality, was a wonderful father to those calves, and leaves a great legacy.