Speaking of ants: Of course, I made sure to spend some time observing the Australian ants 😍🐜
I proudly present my favourites:
🥉Meat ants diseccting prey 🐜🍽️
🥈A banded sugar #ant - such a beauty 🐜🤩
🥇#Myrmecia Bull ant, expert navigator using the landmark panorama 🐜🗺️

The Australian fauna is very exciting and I had the pleasure of meeting many animals😍🦘 Wallabys & kangaroos are frequent visitors. On 22nd of October was #WorldWombatDay and we celebrated it with a teamselfie🤳My highlight was the #Enchidna having breakfast at the side on the road - poor ants 😢🐜

That is so fascinating! 🤩🐜🐝🦋✨️

And my favorite non-insect facts are 😉👇
🥉 #Petrichor, the smell of rain, is mainly caused by one substance: geosmin @silkesachse.bsky.social 🌧👃
🥈 The trigenimal nerve of elephants is 2.1m long 😱🐘
🥇 Spiders have REMsleep & it is possible to track their eye movements 🕷💤 @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social

My favourite facts (slight bias towards insects - sorry for that 🙃)
🥉 Bombardier beetles defend themselves with tiny explosions 🤯🪲
🥈 Gall wasps are seconday vegetarians
🥇 Ants are fANTastic 😇🐜 They employ therapeutic wound care @etf1989.bsky.social and evade toxic baits @tomerczaczkes.bsky.social

And @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social received the ✨️Walther-Arndt-Research-Award✨️ 🧪🏆 for her amazing research on @insect-vision.bsky.social 🦋👁🧠 @uni-konstanz.de @cbehav.bsky.social

Additional @neuroethology.org highlights of the @dzg2025berlin.bsky.social on the second day:

The second @dzg-neurobiology.bsky.social invited talk was by @beetzjerome.bsky.social from @uni-wuerzburg.de on his work on compass and place coding in insects 🧭🧠🦋🐝