Pranav Minasandra

🚨 Out this week in @pnas.org 🚨 The flagship paper from my PhD @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @livingingroups.bsky.social - We show surprising statistical similarities in animal behaviour across states, individuals, and even species. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (🧵 1/10)

Behind the cohesive movement of animal groups lies a richer internal social organization. What can we learn about this hidden social structure by tracking how subgroups form and change, rather than just how often pairs of individuals stay together? Check our new paper! 🧵 doi.org/10.1016/j.an...

"[Using] randomized experiments... We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, & debugging abilities, w/o delivering significant efficiency gains on average. Participants who fully delegated coding tasks showed some productivity improvements, but at the cost of learning"

Researchers just found chimps are less likely to steal from their friends. In some trials, good chimp pals refused to engage with the experiment at all. The new work reveals novel norms around fairness and friendship in our hairy ape cousins. #Primatology #BioAnth 🧪🧪 New at @nytimes.com

PhD at Swansea/Exeter investigating how urban living shapes reproductive decisions and success in herring gulls. Details: bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo... How to apply: www.swbio.ac.uk/agriculture-... Please share. Supervisors listed below for more info.

I will be taking applications for one fully funded PhD student starting in September(ish) 2027 to work on one of 2 projects in @livingingroups.bsky.social and the @imprs-qbee.bsky.social Deadline for submission is Dec 1. imprs-qbee.mpg.de/133244/commu...

I am recruiting for a 2-year postdoc position with our group at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior! Learn more & apply here: tinyurl.com/3n88uv2p Deadline: 20 Dec 2026 Start date: Flexible in 2027 @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @livingingroups.bsky.social @carlzeissstiftung.bsky.social

Some of my thoughts about the surge in AI-generated papers, why this feels like a completely new kind of problem, and what this means for how we evaluate science in biology. Out now in PLOS Biology: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

For my angst-ridden mathematician friends: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKrw...

Thought I'd share this post from a friend which is a more nuanced version of the frustration among mathematicians about how the "mathocalypse" was executed. karagila.org/2026/openai-... I think all nerds are currently processing it.

Re-post 🔁 is appreciated! #neurojobs: we’re looking for new team members to join us @cmc-unit.bsky.social!
If you’d like to study decision-making in naturalistic & embodied contexts (integrating RL, RNNs & cross-species data analysis) in a cool & collaborative research environment 😎, check 👇

We are offering 3 #PhD positions in our Ecology of Animal Societies Department @livingingroups.bsky.social at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior - check them out! imprs-qbee.mpg.de/66685/current

My institute is hiring a group leader in Neuroethology! Bonn is a wonderful place to do neuroscience. Check it out! jobs.b-ite.com/jobposting/4...

Thrilled that our research is featured on the cover! There is also a perspective piece. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Apply to join a really cool new group!

I wrote down my thoughts about the last several weeks of AI hell. aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading...

So excited to see my first PhD paper featured on the cover of J. R. Soc. Interface! 🦅🎉 Thanks to @joefresna.bsky.social & Hannah Williams! Check it out @royalsocietypublishing.org doi.org/10.1098/rsif... @imprs-qbee.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

🚨Preprint alert! 🚨What if your study animal doesn't know the landscape yet? Standard movement models such as SSA assume it does. In our new study we let it learn instead, and put "learner" against "omniscient" head to head (1/4) doi.org/10.64898/202...

Excited to share our new publication in Bioacoustics today, describing the vocal repertoire of white-nosed coatis! 🐾 We combined traditional acoustic analyses with an unsupervised approach to characterise the complexity and diversity of their vocal behaviour. doi.org/10.1080/0952...

I couldn't do it much justice with my phone camera, but this eclipse was a beauty. The moon remained visible until 10 mins before eclipse maximum, when the moon slipped behind a cloud bank with flashing lightning. I suppose that's the only appropriate exit.

Just watched Nolan's Odyssey and was disappointed despite the visual spectacle. But piggybacking off this, if you haven't read it already, do check out A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. A small review of that book by me here: pminasandra.github.io/reviews/2024...

I'm speaking at #ISBE this afternoon at 13:00 (session 2F), come say hi!

Slightly out of date, but Melanie Mitchell is one of the most thoughtful people in the ai/cogsci space: aiguide.substack.com/p/llms-and-w...

I’m beyond excited to share I’ve been awarded a Minerva Fast Track Fellowship by @maxplanck.de to start my research group “Culture and Social Behavior” at @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social! Keep your eyes peeled for a PhD position advertisement coming later this year 🐒 www.ab.mpg.de/1442914/zoe-...

Does anyone have any idea how to get in touch with editorial staff at *Animal Biotelemetry*? I've agreed to review a paper for them, but need a small extension. There is absolutely no point of contact or e-mail ID anywhere, and all contact was from do-not-reply IDs. Help is welcome!

Oh my. This is spectacular. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

the amazing @mayankchugh.bsky.social once again powerfully captures the lived realities of inequality in academic mobility by sharing his experiences. this artwork "weighing" Indian and American passports hits really hard -- goes much beyond mobility privileges.

"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding."

Hey, I wrote a thing about AI in astrophysics ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

If you have ever thought 'I wish I could track individuals in real-time' or 'this tracker runs too slow on my laptop' or 'I want to remove observer bias in my study' or 'how could I automatise my setup?', then you'd like this project 👇 @asab.org @ceiussi.bsky.social @iussi-nwes.bsky.social

Such a fun project led by really talented and passionate people! If you want a free, user-friendly tracking option (live and post-hoc) check out TracktorLive! doi.org/10.64898/202... @rasmusern.bsky.social @jutfelt.bsky.social @tnorin.bsky.social @shaunkillen.bsky.social @zegnitriki.bsky.social

Interested in automating lab experiments or tasks with camera-trackable animals? We (@vivekhsridhar.bsky.social, @domroche.bsky.social, @iplanass.bsky.social) are launching TracktorLive, a real-time #python package for tracking and response. Video below by @iplanass.bsky.social [1/4]

🚨REPOST PLEASE! 🙏🏻 Calling all South African 🇿🇦 zoology students! You have ONE more week to apply to our Collective Behaviour Field Course 📍Two weeks at the Kalahari Research Centre 🗓️ June 2026 💸 Fully funded Application details are at www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/cbfc DM for any questions

Some of us put together a cool real-time tracking+ response system as a python package. Super accessible for those without much computer vision expertise. More when the paper is published. See the pre-print below! 👇

Resharing this timely and important piece from the most recent #ISBE newsletter

One issue is, what happens when the big AI companies start charging the actual costs of running these models? I predict that future AI-agent use may be restricted to big companies and universities. Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/m...

✨New Perspective out w/ Wenning Deng and @fearbrain.bsky.social in @cp-iscience.bsky.social ! We argue that social foraging gives us a unifying, and ecologically grounded way to study how decisions unfold across levels — from individuals and dyads to collectives. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

This is really interesting!

New entry on my webcomic! The poem "HE TELLS HER" by Wendy Cope pminasandra.github.io/remarkable/?...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧪Before the day begins, meerkats share a unique ritual. After emerging from their burrows, they spend up to an hour "sunning" to warm up for the day. During this quiet time, they produce soft, tonal "sunning calls". Just standing, sunbathing, and calling. But why❓ #bioacoustics #meerkats #kalahari

Sometimes, when I really like (or really dislike) something I read, I write a small review about it on my website. Sharing a more recent one: pminasandra.github.io/reviews/2026...

After a trip to the ER for an extremely avoidable silly accident, I started wondering about the neuroscience behind being clumsy. Sounds interesting? Have a look at my post on Substack!