Dr. Gita Gnanadesikan
@ggnanadesikan
Biologist & Comparative Psychologist || Social Behavior & Cognition, Oxytocin, (Epi)genetics || 🐶🐕🦺🐒 || Postdoctoral fellow @ Emory University (formerly FIRST/IRACDA)
Hannah Griebling conducted a cool problem-solving experiment with captive raccoons, presenting them with puzzle boxes with multiple solution difficulties, and finding both explore & exploit patterns. Inhibitory control experiments demonstrate individual differences & high perseverence. #ABS2026 🦝
Kristyn Vitale gave a wonderful overview of domestic cat cognition research (hers & others)! My favorite part: emphasis on how social cats are (more than their stereotypes), although there's a lot of variation (in my view, partly because a lot of cats are insufficiently socialized). #ABS2026 🐈♥️🧍♀️
@ppetschl.bsky.social studied social learning in capuchin monkeys using token trading, manipulating oxytocin endogenously. Oxytocin increased looking at another individual's trades + the percentage of high value trades in both social and solo conditions. #ABS2026 🐵👀🐵
Hee Jin Chung has organized an exciting & interesting symposium on domestic cats as pets, predators, as prey, spanning studies at shelters, in homes & urban ecology. Her own work examines individual variation in outdoor access, hunting behaviors & play behavior. #ABS2026 #FelineScience 🐈
Awesome, inspiring plenary from @elizabethhobson.bsky.social on power, social support & information in monk parakeet social dynamics! She finds social support from partners is extremely important for maintaining & regaining rank. She also advocated supporting each other in our careers. #ABS2026 🦜🦜
Svenja Capitain studied how human explicit and implicit biases towards dogs & wolves affect the animals we're interacting with and studying. Very interesting and cautionary! #ABS2026 🐺🐶
@laurynbenedict.bsky.social documented companion parrots often utter names of humans, their own name & names of other birds & pets (🐶). How do they use them? Contexts: greeting, separation, attention, request, social, personal, vocal label. Some "correct" vocal labels from survey data! #ABS2026 🦜
Great talk by @nicolefurgala.bsky.social on gaze-following in capuchin monkeys: they are sensitive to gaze cues, w lots of individual variation. Males faster to learn from gaze, may be due to the identity of stimuli (alpha female). Can't yet disentangle sex/rank/social closeness, etc. #ABS2026 🐵👀
Interesting (timely? 😬) plenary from Lien Luong on parasitism & the ecology of fear. Exposure to parasites can affect behavior & physiology, even w/o infection! Lots of evidence from flies w various effects: metabolic rate, oviposition, grooming, movement, mating, time budget, etc. #ABS2026 🌵🪰👻
Zuleyma Tang-Martínez reminds us of the importance of questioning assumptions, challenging dominant paradigms, examining outliers & exceptions, as well as the importance of diversity not only as a moral good but for scientific progress. Thank you for your ongoing advocacy and leadership 🙏 #ABS2026
Grace Weyman-Heller found evidence for social learning in cockroaches! But limited effects of existing social relationships on their following of a demonstrator. Interesting questions and future directions for how to quantify cockroach relationships. #ABS2026 #InsectFriends 🪳🪳
Stellar talk from @gerrycarter.bsky.social "finally" experimentally demonstrating reciprocal helping in vampire bats by blocking some bats from helping. He emphasizes that reciprocity, familiarity & kinship all matter, BUT reciprocity can't explain initial evolution of helping. #ABS2026 🦇🩸🦇
Great talk from Emily Laub on female paper wasps choosing other females as cooperative partners. Choice matters! And they evaluate partners before founding nests. Are they looking for overall better partners? More compatible partners? We don't know yet. 🤔 #ABS2026 #InsectFriends
Fascinating keynote from Patricia Brennan on sex & studying it: male genitalia studied >> female genitalia; sexual autonomy in female 🦆, 🐬 & more; sexual pleasure & copulatory behavior often ignored in science but important evolutionarily; and sex is more diverse than we often imagine!! #ABS2026
Excited to be at #ABS2026! President Beth Jakob got us started this evening with an amazing overview of spider vision, gaze tracking, and attention. So cool to watch spider retinas tracking stimuli! 🕷️ She also plugged the important impacts that can be made in administrative roles. 🙏
In a longitudinal study of 59 litters of dog puppies, we found evidence for maternal & other early rearing effects on various behavioral & cognitive measures at ~8 weeks, as well as 6-16 months. 🐕 #CanineScience #AnimalBehavior Free access: authors.elsevier.com/c/1nCYWmjMDu0w
Closing out #CO32026! Thanks to everyone who organized a wonderful conference! @compcogsoc.bsky.social
Yay! Happy Fox! (I'm bummed I never did see the ones on ASU's campus... Nor any in Tucson...) #TeamCanid #2026MMM #InvertSnack
1) Some traits were highly heritable, while others were not, suggesting fundamental differences in the underlying biological mechanisms & genetic architecture. 2) Estimates mostly stayed stable or decreased across time. 3) Pedigree & genomic methods produced similar results. #BehavioralGenetics
Melt the ICE hat completed (sans blocking... doing that now)! I'll probably make some tweaks for the next one... But it's a very easy pattern and quick knit. 🧶 #Knitting #Resistance #CatsOfBsky
If you have an election today, however big or small it seems, and whatever you think "the odds" are, please take the time to go vote!! #ElectionDay2025 #CatsOfBsky
Lakshmi has some thoughts about synapse structure and function... #CatsOfAcademia #CatsOfBsky
Zebra, chicken, and raccoon! Thank you ALL, animals and humans, for showing up today! Keep organizing and keeping up the good work! #NoKings #StandUpForScience #AnimalsUniteAgainstFacism
And @staceyabrams.com is inspiring us to fight for a democracy that includes ALL of us, calling out ethnofacism, and decrying the actions of this regime. #NoKings #StandUpSpeakUp #DemocracyForEveryone
@warnock.senate.gov got the crowd fired up! Encouraging everyone to keep showing up and standing up for what's right. #NoKings #Atlanta