Abstract
Parrots are popular companion animals, but are frequently relinquished because of behavioral problems, including abnormal repetitive behaviors like feather damaging behavior and stereotypy. In addition to contributing to pet relinquishment, these behaviors are important as potential indicators of diminished psychological well-being. While abnormal behaviors are common in captive animals, their presence and/or severity varies between animals of the same species that are experiencing the same environmental conditions. Personality differences could contribute to this observed individual variation, as they are known risk factors for stress sensitivity and affective disorders in humans. The goal of this study was to assess the relationship between personality and the development and severity of abnormal behaviors in captive-bred orange-winged Amazon parrots (Amazona amazonica). We monitored between-individual behavioral differences in enrichment-reared parrots of known personality types before, during, and after enrichment deprivation. We predicted that parrots with higher scores for neurotic-like personality traits would be more susceptible to enrichment deprivation and develop more abnormal behaviors. Our results partially supported this hypothesis, but also showed that distinct personality dimensions were related to different forms of abnormal behavior. While neuroticism-like traits were linked to feather damaging behavior, extraversion-like traits were negatively related to stereotypic behavior. More extraverted birds showed resiliency to environmental stress, developing fewer stereotypies during enrichment deprivation and showing lower levels of these behaviors following re-enrichment. Our data, together with the results of the few studies conducted on other species, suggest that, as in humans, certain personality types render individual animals more susceptible or resilient to environmental stress. Further, this susceptibility/resiliency can have a long-term effect on behavior, as evidenced by behavioral changes that persisted despite re-enrichment. Ours is the first study evaluating the relationship between personality dimensions, environment, and abnormal behaviors in an avian species.
Highlights
Abnormal oral and locomotor behaviors have been extensively researched because they are common in captive animals [1], especially when those animals are kept in inadequate housing environments [2]
Total Activity increased from baseline to unenriched housing treatment (UNENR) and remained elevated at the end of reenriched housing (RENR)
We found that creating sub-optimal environmental conditions via deprivation of enrichment had significant and lasting effects on abnormal behavior
Summary
Abnormal oral and locomotor behaviors have been extensively researched because they are common in captive animals [1], especially when those animals are kept in inadequate housing environments [2]. Many studies have shown that the severity of abnormal repetitive behaviors varies across individuals within a particular environment. Garner and Mason [3] found that the amount of active time individual bank voles engaged in stereotypic behavior varied from 3.5% to 28.1% of active time. This large variation in the severity of stereotypic behavior between members of the same species experiencing the same environmental conditions indicates that the environment alone is not sufficient to explain the development and severity of abnormal behaviors. And temporally consistent differences in behavior across individual members of the same species Personality is related to sensitivity to environmental stimuli [13,14] and to physiological stress reactivity (reviewed in [15,16]), called ‘coping styles.’
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