Gregory Kohn
@kohngregory
Professor specializing in bird social behavior. Interested in developmental systems thought, ontogenetic niches, organismal agency, and ייִדיש. PI: Animal Social Interaction lab
Wood storks (Mycteria americana) and Great Egrets (Ardea alba) highlighting their different foraging strategies.
Moving some planters in the garden and suddenly felt something moving against my hand. This could have gone a lot worse. Florida cottonmouth (Agkistrodon conanti).
In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.
Somebody needs to tell the new parking lot attendants that attempting to get into a vehicle is unlawful (they literally tried to jump right in my car right after this video).
My favorite photo this summer. Chestnut-sided Warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica) at Norton Book in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
Chestnut-sided warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica) at Norton Brook NY. This individual was exceptionally confiding and he followed me around the site.
Really interesting book that covers Lefebvre’s studies on avian innovation and behavioral flexibility. How this relates to “general intelligence” is an open conceptual question for me, but the studies here really speak to the potential of behavioral drive in avian evolution.
In all my years of studying birds I have never had a wild one fly right onto my lap. Until today. This fledgling Red-eyed Vireo appeared from nowhere in what was probably its first flight. I moved it to safety and it was later observed being fed by its parents. Handled with training and permits.
Preprint on seek eating kinematics in passerines www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Today is Karl Marx’s birthday. I don’t know if he would be delighted or disparaged by how prescient his observations on the nature of society, economics, and science still stand 208 years after his birth.
I found two pretty obscure issues of the Yiddish art and literature magazine Topelpunkt. Looks like it was published until the early 2000s, but can’t find out much further about it. / איך האָב געפֿונען צוויי זעלטענע אויסגאַבעס פֿון דער קונסט און ליטעראַרישער זשורנאַל "טאָפּלפונקט".
His species-specific papers, such as the one on Bronze mannikins, are my favorite. Detailed descriptions of everything from comfort behavior to aggression. They convey a sense of excitement where even in the seemingly banal world of captive birds, impactful discoveries are still waiting to be made.
He highlighted the importance of observing subtle changes in behavior, such as feather postures, and documented how slight changes in posture, feather erection, and gesture could have large, but non-obvious, communicative effects. Also, my favorite illustrative figures are from this paper.
Along with Derek Goodwin, he paved the way for estrildid finches to become a popular system within the behavioral and evolutionary sciences. His papers are still chock-full of insights and descriptions of behavior we have yet to study further, let alone explain.
One of his most lasting yet rarely acknowledged, achievements is pioneering the use of zebra finches in behavioral research. He was the first to describe the details of zebra finch behavior, and therefore likely single-handedly in establishing them as a model system.
Along with Derek Goodwin he paved the way for estrildid finches to become a popular system within the behavioral and evolutionary sciences. His papers are still are chock full of insights and descriptions of behavior we have yet to even study further, let alone explain.
One of his most lasting, yet rarely acknowledged, achievements is pioneering the use of zebra finches in behavioral research. He was the first to describe the details of zebra finch behavior, and therefore single-handedly aided their establishment as a model system in the Anglo-sphere.
Seeing a lot of folks share this. Tailor birds are amazing, but some of this is clearly AI. I have never seen a tailorbird nest with stitching going around the top, and they don’t make arbitrary leaf patches, or use scotch tape.
New paper with Parker Tichko on the ‘poverty of the stimulus’. Drawing from comp psy, ethology, and dev systems thought, we propose that development should be approached as a causal “flow” of non-obvious organism-environment interactions rather than innate responses to impoverished environments.