Abstract
Personality is often defined as the behaviour of individual animals that is consistent across contexts and over time. Personality traits may become unstable during stages of ontogeny from infancy to adulthood, especially during major periods of development such as around the time of sexual maturation. The personality of domesticated farm animals has links with productivity, health and welfare, but to our knowledge, no studies have investigated the development and stability of personality traits across developmental life stages in a mammalian farm animal species. Here, we describe the consistency of personality traits across ontogeny in dairy cattle from neonate to first lactation as an adult. The personality traits ‘bold’ and ‘exploratory’, as measured by behavioural responses to novelty, were highly consistent during the earlier (before and after weaning from milk) and later (after puberty to first lactation) rearing periods, but were not consistent across these rearing periods when puberty occurred. These findings indicate that personality changes in cattle around sexual maturation are probably owing to major physiological changes that are accelerated under typical management conditions at this time. This work contributes to the understanding of the ontogeny of behaviour in farm animals, especially how and why individuals differ in their behaviour.
Highlights
Personality is often defined as individual differences in behaviour that are consistent across time and situations [1]
Personality traits may not be consistent across some stages of ontogeny from juvenile to adult, especially during major periods of development such as morphogenesis, sexual maturation or times of significant neurological and physiological reorganization [2,3]
We investigated the long-term consistency of individual behavioural responses to novelty, and the stability of derived personality traits, over four periods of development; to our knowledge this is the first to study the ontogeny of personality traits from early age to adulthood in a commercial farm animal species
Summary
Personality is often defined as individual differences in behaviour that are consistent across time and situations [1]. Personality traits may not be consistent across some stages of ontogeny from juvenile to adult, especially during major periods of development such as morphogenesis, sexual maturation or times of significant neurological and physiological reorganization [2,3]. Guinea pigs [7], marmots [8], junglefowl [9]). Species such as the rat [10], squirrel [11], lake frog 2 [12] and damselfly [13] showed stable personality traits (such as boldness, exploration or activity) from juvenile to adult stages. The reason for differences in stability of personality across ontogeny may be related to changes in internal factors such as growth rate, hormone profile, metabolism and morphology, or to changes in physical or social environments [14]
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