No animal is an island, entire of itself. With the exception of the last living dodo, any animal lives in a world where there are others like itself — members of its own species, with which it might cooperate or compete, and the only group from which it can find an effective breeding partner. Conspecifics are a distinct and important part of an animal's environment, even if it is not a member of a notably social species. So important that specific cognitive mechanisms have evolved for interacting with others of the same species — for recognising them, communicating with them, learning from them, understanding what they are up to… These mechanisms are the subject of the burgeoning field of social cognition, the focus of a CellPress ‘LabLinks’ meeting held at Birkbeck College on 3rd December 2010, arranged by Stavroula Kousta (Trends in Cognitive Sciences), Meredith LeMasurier (Neuron) and me, with academic organizers Chris and Uta Frith (University College London).