Tyus Williams says he grew up as a nerdy, neurodiverse, science-loving child who was a little bit unsure of his place in the world. “When you’re a young, curious Black kid with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder, you feel like you were born into a world that wasn’t made for you,” he says. Today, he’s a budding carnivore ecologist with fans who range from readers of his first children’s book to online social-justice warriors and colleagues who admire his brand of equity-seeking science.

“I knew at the age of six what I wanted to be,” Williams says. That meant working with animals, especially wildlife. But after a school job at an animal hospital in Alpharetta, Georgia, where he grew up, Williams realized that he couldn’t bear to euthanize pets. Instead, he chose a research path.

Williams studied wildlife science at the University of Georgia in Athens. His early research included contributions to surveying salamanders in the Appalachian mountains, jaguars (Panthera onca) in Belize and sea turtles and eastern diamondback rattlesnakes (Crotalus adamanteus) in coastal Georgia.

As someone who didn’t always fit in, Williams has a soft spot for carnivores, which can be seen as menaces or threats, particularly in urban areas.

“My mom would never let me have a snake,” he says, “but I was always interested in carnivorism.” He is now working on his PhD dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, where he splits his time between urban ecologist Chris Schell’s group and that of wildlife ecologist Justin Brashares. Williams examines how human society exacerbates the effects that outdoor domestic cats — now considered invasive — have on other species. The research groups study urban ecology, justice and equity.

‘Your friendly neighbourhood ecologist’

Schell first met Williams at an event for Black mammologists. The two bonded over a shared interest in finding links between ecology and sociology — in other words, in how human behaviour influences what animals do in their environments.

“He has the genuine love of science you’d see in a five-year-old,” Schell says. Even in the burnout-prone academic world, Williams seems to have maintained that. Yet, “I don’t think it’s lost on Tyus that he’s one of the few Black students in the department”, Schell says. “Tyus has struggled with impostor syndrome in an incredibly big way.”

Despite these struggles, Williams cultivates a steady social-media outreach effort alongside his studies. He led social media for the Cougar Network, a US research organization, and his children’s book Big Cats (A Day in the Life) was published in 2022.

The book is aimed at children six to eight years old who want to delve into the scientific details — just as Williams did at that age. His publisher, Sam Priddy, at Neon Squid Books, says the target audience is a little kid who “loves facts, learning things, collecting them and telling their friends and family about them”. For an author, “we wanted someone who had actually been with these animals in the wild and tracked them”, says Priddy.

In 2018, Williams launched #SciQFriday on X (formerly Twitter). Through this, he spent a couple of years hosting weekly Q&As with dozens of life scientists, from herpetologists to virologists and microbiologists, before turning to newer platforms such as TikTok.

Also on social media, Williams, who describes himself on TikTok as “your friendly neighborhood ecologist”, has gained a following for posts that address current issues from a scientific and social-justice perspective. An example is this one explaining why the disappearance of pets in Springfield, Ohio, is probably down to coyote predation, and not — as put forth by US president-elect Donald Trump during his election campaign — to their being eaten by Haitian immigrants. Williams often lists references in the bottom corner of the TikTok videos he records in his apartment, with his favourite Spider-Man poster in the background.

As a Millennial scientist, Williams often blurs the boundaries between personal and professional identity. His chatty, information-packed style has earned him a following of more than 31,700 accounts on TikTok, with more than 1.2 million likes. He’s not afraid to post a video on the science behind textured hair, with half a dozen citations, because that’s what he himself is interested in. Williams describes his own hair as “if Medusa and Hydra got together, and this was their love child”. He goes on to explain that the concept of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ hair is problematic and driven by white supremacist ideals of smooth, straight hair, and the idea that curly or textured hair is inherently less desirable.

“The different types of textures we see, and even curly hair in its kinkiest form, is a great example of the living phenomena of adaptive selection under selective pressures,” he explains, outlining research hypothesizing that textured hair developed as a cooling mechanism as humans evolved in equatorial Africa. Researchers showed that the tighter the curl, the better heat can dissipate. The video lasts nearly five minutes, an eternity in the world of TikTok.

But social-media super-sharing typifies Williams’s style. “Engaging in a long philosophical debate about the connection from things that seem completely unrelated to something we do in the lab,” Schell says. “That’s quintessential Tyus.”

Social justice in the wild

Williams’s research draws complex links between racism and colourism (prejudice against people of the same ethnicity but with darker skin tones). It includes the effects of biases against darker animals and the spiritual significance of rare, white versions of species including buffalo (Bison bison), bears and elk (Cervus canadensis). A study that he co-authored last year highlighted how human societies interact with and protect unusual black or white coyotes (Canis latrans), eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) and white- and black-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus and O. hemionus), whose fur is typically brown or grey¹.