Abstract
Personality and anxiety disorders across species are affected by genetic and environmental factors. Shyness-boldness personality continuum exists across species, including the domestic dog, with a large within- and across-breed variation. Domestic dogs are also diagnosed for several anxiety-related behavioral conditions, such as generalized anxiety disorders, phobias, and separation anxiety. Genetic and environmental factors contributing to personality and anxiety are largely unknown. We collected questionnaire data from a Finnish family dog population (N = 3264) in order to study the associating environmental factors for canine fearfulness, noise sensitivity, and separation anxiety. Early life experiences and exercise were found to associate with anxiety prevalence. We found that fearful dogs had less socialization experiences (p = 0.002) and lower quality of maternal care (p < 0.0001) during puppyhood. Surprisingly, the largest environmental factor associating with noise sensitivity (p < 0.0001) and separation anxiety (p = 0.007) was the amount of daily exercise; dogs with noise sensitivity and separation anxiety had less daily exercise. Our findings suggest that dogs share many of the same environmental factors that contribute to anxiety in other species as well, such as humans and rodents. Our study highlights the importance of early life experiences, especially the quality of maternal care and daily exercise for the welfare and management of the dogs, and reveals important confounding factors to be considered in the genetic characterization of canine anxiety.
Highlights
Large and stable personality differences are observed in many behavioral traits, such as in aggressiveness or fearfulness across species [1,2]
This study reveals associated environmental factors that are useful for genetic studies, but are important factors to be considered for canine welfare
The main difference comes from adding further background questions to versions three and four to better document the early life experiences and conditions of the dogs
Summary
Large and stable personality differences ( called coping styles, temperament, behavioral syndrome) are observed in many behavioral traits, such as in aggressiveness or fearfulness across species [1,2]. The personality variation is well-documented in many species, the ontogeny and development of personality is less studied [3]. Personality dimensions have high heritability estimates (h2 = 0.3–0.5) [4,5,6] environmental factors have a large contribution. Parallel to the study of genetics of personality, we need information on the environmental factors that might affect the development of various personalities.
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