Assistant Professor @EmoryUniversity - Hominin macroevolution, interspecific competition, and living models
Joined March 2017
- Tweets 599
- Following 278
- Followers 494
- Likes 885
111 Photos and videos
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17 Apr 2024
Interspecific competition played an important, previously ignored, and unusual role in hominin speciation and extinction - read my latest paper in @NatureEcoEvo here: rdcu.be/dE0vz
@CamZoology @UCamArchaeology
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18 Aug 2025
Absolutely thrilled to announce I've just started as Assistant Professor at @EmoryUniversity! Life - both academic and non-academic - feels full of excitement, ideas, and energy. Stay tuned for total irreverence for disciplinary boundaries in human evolutionary biology 🤩✨
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9 Jul 2025
I'd apply in a heartbeat if I could. Most creative (!) project proposal I've ever read, brilliant fieldwork opportunities, and the BEST supervising team you could wish for! Apply, apply, apply!
2 Jul 2025
📣ATTENTION!!! Two PhD positions on Creativity in Wild Chimpanzees and Bonobos 🤩@snsf_ch @UZH_en @univofstandrews Come join @APE_Group_UZH & Wild Minds Lab @NakedPrimate ✨Please RT✨ @EFPrimatology @PsgbStudent @BiologicalAnth @IPS_PrimateNews @PrimateEducate
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9 Jul 2025
Key result number 2⃣...
8 Jul 2025
Many carrying styles were atypical to those of living healthy & sick infants, suggesting that chimps are aware of the difference... These carrying modes included draping the corpse over the shoulders/back, carrying the corpse in the mouth, by the head/neck or tucked in the groin.
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9 Jul 2025
Key result number 1⃣...
8 Jul 2025
Until now, ICC in chimps had only been documented in habituated groups via direct observation.
But what about the many chimpanzee populations that aren't habituated?
Using camera traps, we recorded ICC in 7 unhabituated communities, at *twice* the frequency of existing reports.
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
8 Jul 2025
Chimpanzee Dian (named after Fossey) of the Tongbongbon community carrying her deceased infant in the Nimba Mountains of Guinea 😢@APE_Group_UZH @UZH_Science
8 Jul 2025
Comparative thanatology (the study of how animals respond to death), offers insights into cognition, maternal bond, and grief.
One response is *infant corpse carrying (ICC)*, which is observed in many animal species, particularly among cetaceans and primates including chimps
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9 Jul 2025
A lovely group of collaborators, and such a thought-provoking subject matter. Give it a read! ⬇️
8 Jul 2025
🚨 New Paper Alert 🚨
*Camera Traps Document Infant Corpse Carrying Behaviour in Multiple Unhabituated Chimpanzee Populations*
A multi-site collaboration across Guinea-Bissau 🇬🇼, Guinea🇬🇳, Uganda🇺🇬 & Tanzania🇹🇿
Now published in @Ecol_Evol
Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
19 May 2025
🚨 New study reveals that when used to summarize scientific research, generative AI is nearly five times LESS accurate than humans.
Many haven't realized, but Gen AI's accuracy problem is worse than initially thought.
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
19 May 2025
Hot off the press 📢: one of the most surprising and unsettling findings of my PhD. A novel social tradition emerged in the tool-using capuchins of Jicarón island… abducting and carrying the infants of another species. Thread with gifs, videos, and all the bizarre details 👇
19 May 2025
Humans have many unusual traditions. But did you know animals’ strange behaviors can become culture too? Out now in Current Biology (doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.0…) we document a bizarre tradition: interspecies infant abduction. Interactive timeline (ab.mpg.de/671374) 🧵(1/12)
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
19 Dec 2024
"Primate Phenotypes:" 6,000 3D scans. Skeletons. Bones. MorphoSource. Go.Collect.Data! #openaccess
Project description:
nature.com/articles/s41597-0…
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
3 Sep 2024
NEW VERSION: Claddis version 0.7.0 is now live in CRAN. cran.r-project.org/web/packa…
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
Just came out!
Reconstructing contactand a potential interbreedinggeographical zonebetween Neanderthalsand anatomically modern humans
doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-7…
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
26 Aug 2024
New episode!! 📣📣
A conversation w/ @birchlse about his new book, 'The Edge of Sentience.'
Some beings are clearly sentient—primates and dogs, for example. Many other beings might be, but we're just not sure. How should we treat the edge cases?
Listen: disi.org/the-space-of-possib…
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
23 Aug 2024
🚨 Exciting news! The first paper from our project out in @IntJPrimatology 🐒 We report positive interspecies interactions between tolerant geladas and olive baboons in an unprotected area in Ethiopia 🫱🏾🫲🏼@TheLeakeyFndtn @EthosLabo Full story here: link.springer.com/article/10…
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22 Aug 2024
Was asked to comment on @wabarree's new paper (in Dutch, sorry Andrew!): "There is far too little explicit thought about the limits of our knowledge and what we can do about it. This is a much-needed and creative response to that scarcity..a delightfully uncomfortable conclusion"
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
27 Jun 2024
Just finished two inspirational days @EED2024. An honor to present @Tied2Teeth @ERC_Research and to see the always-kind @J_Saers, the always-cool @aigverte and to meet Frietson Galis! Some of my fave talks: @UCSDCooperLab
@aigverte
Marketa Kaucka
Maud Fagny
Thanks #Helsinki!
ALT Poster image of Helsinki for EED conference
ALT Selfie of Jaap, Frietson, Alexa, and Leslea
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
21 Jun 2024
Several plants eaten by chimpanzees when they are ill or wounded have been found to have medicinal effects, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that our close relatives practise self-medication. newscientist.com/article/243…
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13 Jun 2024
Getting our heads in the game 💪
12 Jun 2024
Hominin skulls galore!!
Excited to be working with @lolvanhol today on skull morphologies 💀👀
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
9 Jun 2024
Why foxglove populations are doomed and the importance of thinking about metapopulations. More videos youtube.com/@Bill_Sutherland
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Laura van Holstein retweeted
5 Jun 2024
Join me on Episode 9 of the @paperlesspod as I chat with Dr. Elodie Freymann from @UniofOxford about her groundbreaking research on Chimpanzee Self-Medication in Uganda's Budongo Forest. Don't miss out! linktr.ee/paperlesspodcast
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