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Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle

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 maturatio...

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Autores principales: Neave, Heather W., Costa, Joao H. C., Weary, Daniel M., von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7062087/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32257341
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191849
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author Neave, Heather W.
Costa, Joao H. C.
Weary, Daniel M.
von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G.
author_facet Neave, Heather W.
Costa, Joao H. C.
Weary, Daniel M.
von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G.
author_sort Neave, Heather W.
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-70620872020-03-31 Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle Neave, Heather W. Costa, Joao H. C. Weary, Daniel M. von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G. R Soc Open Sci Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience 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. The Royal Society 2020-02-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7062087/ /pubmed/32257341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191849 Text en © 2020 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Neave, Heather W.
Costa, Joao H. C.
Weary, Daniel M.
von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G.
Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle
title Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle
title_full Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle
title_fullStr Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle
title_full_unstemmed Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle
title_short Long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle
title_sort long-term consistency of personality traits of cattle
topic Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7062087/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32257341
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191849
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