Animal personalities -- and science's increasing recognition of such

The cover story of the Sunday, January 22, New York Times Magazine, is "The Animal Self" by Charles Siebert. The article is a discussion of studies of non-human personality.

It opens with the writer's visit to an aquarium where he meets and learns about the octopi, and is told about their distinctive personalities.

Then Siebert writes:

"Scientists are not typically disposed to wielding a word like 'personality' when talking about animals. Doing so borders on the scientific heresy of anthropomorphism. And yet for a growing number of researchers from a broad range of disciplines - psychology, evolutionary biology and ecology, animal behavior and welfare - it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid that term when trying to describe the variety of behaviors that they are now observing in an equally broad and expanding array of creatures, everything from nonhuman primates to hyenas and numerous species of birds to water striders and stickleback fish and, of course, giant Pacific octopuses.

"In fact, in the years since Anderson and Mather's original paper, a whole new field of research has emerged known simply as 'animal personality.' Through close and repeated observations of different species in a variety of group settings and circumstances, scientists are finding that our own behavioral traits exist in varying degrees and dimensions among creatures across all the branches of life's tree. Observing our fellow humans, we all recognize the daredevil versus the more cautious, risk-averse type; the aggressive bully as opposed to the meek victim; the sensitive, reactive individual versus the more straight-ahead, proactive sort, fairly oblivious to the various subtle signals of his surroundings. We wouldn't have expected to meet all of them, however, in everything from farm animals and birds to fish and insects and spiders. But more and more now, we are recognizing ourselves and our ways to be recapitulations of the rest of biology. And as scientists track these phe nomena, they are also beginning to unravel such core mysteries as the bioevolutionary underpinnings of personality, both animal and human; the dynamic interplay between genes and environment in the expression of various personality traits; and why it is that nature invented such a thing as personality in the first place....

"Now, with the emergence of animal-personality studies, we are gaining an even fuller appreciation not only of the distinctiveness of birds and beasts and their behaviors but also of their deep resemblances to us and our own. Somehow, through the very creatures we have long piggybacked upon to tell stories about ourselves, we are beginning to get at the essence of that one aspect of the self we have long thought to be exclusively and quintessentially ours: the individual personality. The octopuses' garden is proving to be quite deeply and variously shaded indeed.

Siebert interviews Sam Gosling, who has founded the first Animal Personality Institute, based in Austin, Texas.

We read:
"Gosling, however, was intent on exploring personality at its most rudimentary level - below the radar, if you will, of human consciousness. Applying some of the very same personality assessments that we use on humans, he wondered whether we could observe in animals essential traits like fearfulness, aggressiveness, affability or calmness, traits that can exist outside of cognition and yet are clearly and repeatedly apparent in varying measures in different individual animals within a given species."

In a paper he published in 1999 in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, Gosling wrote:

"The evolutionary continuity between humans and other animals suggests that some dimensions of personality may be common across a wide range of species. Scientists have been reluctant to ascribe personality traits, emotion and cognitions to animals, even though they readily accept that the anatomy and physiology of humans is similar to that of animals. Yet there is nothing in evolutionary theory to suggest that only physical traits are subject to selection pressures."

Thankfully, in this article about the amazing breakthroughs that finally allow scientists to discuss animal personality, there are the following lines, for those of us who have long found the scientific questioning laughable:

"Indeed, animals like dogs and cats point up what often appears to be a paradoxically prodigious 'duh factor' behind this otherwise cutting-edge science. While scientists may tussle endlessly over the validity of applying the word personality to nonhumans, for people in the everyday world - especially those who spend any time around animals - the assertion that they have distinct personalities seems absurdly obvious."

Indeed scientists seem to cling to the idea that other animals are fundamentally different from humans. If they let that premise drop, how would they justify how they treat them? Ironically, we see a hint of that division towards the end the article:

Gosling is quoted:
"What really got me interested when I started exploring this is I noticed that what the animal researchers were doing in practice was exactly what human researchers were saying would be the perfect study they could do in a perfect world. Like you ask a human personality researcher, they might say what we'd do is take a bunch of individuals, and we'd watch them from conception till death and record all the major events in their lives and know who mated with whom and who had a fight with whom. And if we wanted, we could give them frightening stimuli and so on."

In other words, in proving to themselves how like we are to other animals, they do to those other animals things they would be forbidden to do to humans -- whether it be terrifying them or actually causing them pain.

The article includes discussions of personality types, not just in the most expected animals, such as dogs or chimpanzees, but also in various insects and fish. It is a fascinating article, which you find on line at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/magazine/22animal.html

It presents a terrific opportunity for letters to the editor about the way humans treat members of other species. The New York Times Magazine takes letters at magazine [at] nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.


(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)