Studying animals and their behavior has come a long way since the pure behaviorism of Skinner and his colleagues. In those darker days, a form of Cartesian thought reigned supreme and non-human animals were basically assumed to operate purely on the basis of mechanical inputs and outputs and a single – though powerful – cognitive ability: associative learning. This has long been epitomized by Skinner’s salivating dogs or pecking pigeons. Starting in the 1960s-1970s, however, more psychologists began to seriously discuss the possibility that animals of all sorts had complex inner lives. Fast forward to contemporary research, and you find ethologists, psychologists, and ecologists all interested in animal cognition and behavior – including the differences between individual animals. In this more welcoming atmosphere, non-human personality research has slowly worked its way to the mainstream and is now contributing across these diverse fields. Since I am interested in personality and animals, I think this is very good news.

But why should we be interested in animal personality? Well, human personality has been linked to health, education achievement, and career success. In studies on non-human animals in the wild, personality has been shown to play a part in survival rates and predator-prey interactions. Unsurprisingly, personality also influences pair compatibility and group social cohesion in captive animals. The former can affect everything from breeding success to child rearing. Clearly this has great potential for application in zoos and sanctuaries, where complex housing arrangements are par for the course as keepers try to find the best use of the limited space. In conservation breeding programs, too, knowledge of individual animals’ personalities could lead to better matching of breeding pairs which would potentially avoid the stress (for both couple and keepers!) of failed couplings and improve the chances of species on the cusp of extinction.

The next question is, what kind of personalities do animals have? How do you describe them? The answer to this question depends a little bit on your perspective, but in general you can reliably test and observe certain types of personality traits in non-human animals: (1) boldness-fearfulness, (2) curiosity-neophobia, (3) calmness-neuroticism, (4) active-lazy, (5) sociability-aggression, and (6) extraversion-introversion. Not all traits are found in all animals, but each trait has been found in multiple species. Once you determine what general traits describe a species, then you can map each individual relative to the species’ average. For instance, psychologists map humans on the ‘big five’ traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism while horses have been found to vary across six dimensions: Dominance, Anxiousness, Excitability, Protection, Sociability, and Inquisitiveness. At PDXWildlife there is an ongoing study of panda personality here at Bifengxia, and we think there may be between four and five traits, including: Exploratory, Aggressiveness, Excitability, Fearfulness, and Activity. So, let’s imagine one panda who is into exploring, a bit aggressive, and moderately excitable – but not particularly active or fearful. Then there could be a second panda who is quite active and fearful, but not particularly into exploring and slightly less excitable and aggressive. A comparison of these two pandas’ personalities may look something like the picture above. Do you think these two hypothetical panda bears would be a compatible pair? Let me know your thoughts!

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Hi there! I’m Jonathan Thames and I am interning with PDXWildlife in order to learn the data collection method on their personality trials and to complete my master’s degree with the University of Edinburgh. I’d love to hear your feedback on panda personalities or if you have any questions. Thanks for reading.