Dr Steve Portugal, The University of Oxford

Our paper on cooperation in V formation flight has been published in PNAS and can be read here. Lots of media interest which is good. BBC as usual have done a great job – Read here

Animal Behaviour Practicals kicked off this week with the students working with Siamese Fighting Fish. Most of the fish behaved as expected, a couple in particular being very aggressive (James Pond: Bubble 07), but also a couple that couldn’t be bothered with anything!

New nature documentary, “Natures Boldest Thieves” on BBC1 this Sunday, 5:10pm, looking at what makes certain species (and individuals) more prone to interact with humans (and then steal from them). Presented by Lucy Cooke (“Talk to the Animals”), we do an experiment looking at gull boldness and sensory ecology, mixed in with some bits about flight. Was fun to film – a long time ago mind, April 2014. Crazy unseasonal weather (28 degrees C) resulted in me getting quite sunburnt (irresponsible I know). Will be interested to see how/if they’ve toned that down in the post-editing.

Interesting paper out this week in Science, by Bishop, Hawkes, Butler et al., on Bar-headed Geese migration (paper here). Lots of press stories on the research, and the (decent) journalists were keen to get second opinions, and was fun to chat to them about the work (it’s an interesting paper). Some of the write ups are here and here.

I have a PhD NERC London DTP Project available on the aggression physiology of Siamese Fighting Fish!

Details are here: http://london-nerc-dtp.org/5271-2/

Feel free to get in touch!!