Wednesday 18 January | Waterstone’s Union Bridge | 7pm | Free

Well?  Did they?  Of course they didn’t.  Imagine if they did though, imagine if the wee twitter logo bird thing did invent it, and he’s tapping away at his wee smartphone with his wee beak, smugly tweeting artsy instagram photos of some boutique birdhouse he’s staying at during his winter flight south right now.  Mind-blowing.

“OK, what am I reading here?” you ask.  Right, “Did Animals Invent Twitter?” is the rather catchy title of a talk being given by Dr David Lusseau, from the University of Aberdeen’s School of Biological Sciences at the latest Cafe Scientifique event in Waterstone’s next week.  It even made the Daily Mail the other day (no link. I refuse), and they hate social media, they hate it so much that they spend all their time on social media looking for potential anti-social media stories.  Meta.

I have digressed slightly, anyway, Dr Lusseau spent ten years researching social conventions in the animal kingdom, and has concluded:  ”Social networks are the same across all species, and whilst details of their structure may differ, some properties remain the same whether we are looking at killer whales, spider monkeys or indeed humans…In my talk I will explain that the driver behind the formation of social networks in the animal kingdom is information gathering.  This information differs between species and populations – so it could be where food is, where predators are, or how strong you are in comparison to the other animals around you which would make you more of less likely to win in a fight.

Schools of dolphins provide an example of this.  As individuals, dolphins have their own daily needs to fulfil, such as resting and eating, but they are also concerned with what they should do next as a group.”

There you go then.

This just in from a dolphin:

@anotherdolphin: just spent all day swimming around with some dude hanging onto my fin. fml. beer?

Bonus points if you turn up dressed as your favourite animal and spend the entire talk chuckling at your phone…