A team of scientists have published in The Royal Society a study on tigers in which the personality of the feline has been explored, especially that of the Amur tiger. Entitled Majestic Tigers: Personality Structure in the Great Amur Cat, the research has also delved into whether there are any detectable personality dimensions associated with the measured outcomes, including group status, health, and mating frequency.
Thus, the experts pointed out that Siberian tigers fall between two scales called "majesty" and "firmness". Dr. Abdel Abdellaoui, joint first author of the research from the University of Amsterdam, stressed that "if I had to choose which of If these human dimensions are more like our tiger dimensions, I would probably equate stateliness with extroversion and stability with the opposite of neuroticism.”
Dr Rosalind Arden, co-author of the research from the London School of Economics, noted that while the two scales above, determined from a questionnaire, do not provide a complete description of tiger personalities, they do They do pick up some differences. “It shows that tigers tend to have some dispositions, just like in humans there are people who are very extroverted or very introverted,” she said.
In the aforementioned header, the team that authored the study points out that the Chinese researchers who have participated in it created a list of 70 words that experts who work with tigers believed were appropriate to describe the temperaments of animals. Obstinate, stupid and frank, are some of them.
“These were all initially Chinese words, so there may be both cultural and language differences that make some of these words more difficult to translate,” Abdellaoui noted.
A tiger personality questionnaire was then given based on the words of feeders or veterinarians who worked with 152 tigers at Harbin Siberian Tiger Park and 96 tigers living at Hengdaohezi Siberian Tiger Park, both in China. On average, each feline was rated by more than three people. The results of this test indicated that the words chosen formed two main groups that apply to big cats: “majestic” and “firmness or stability”.
As for the tigers rated as "majestic", the questionnaire included ratings such as dignified, imposing and agile. Words such as affectionate, obedient, and calm were associated with "firmness." In total these two large groups represented 38% of the test scores.
The researchers note in the study that “tigers that score higher on 'majestic' are healthier, eat more live prey, have a higher group status (among other tigers evaluated by human raters), and mate with more frequency".
The stability factor highlighted by the research has elements that could be interpreted as related to a dimension similar to neuroticism. A possible limitation that could have contributed to a lower congruence coefficient would be the characteristics of the sample from which the study started.
“The replication sample may have had different characteristics that could have affected the factor structure. Only in the second sample, for example, were the tigers separated by age groups and lived in a smaller territory. They also point out that another limitation could be the length of time that the evaluators had known the tigers, since they differed on this issue.
“As we learn more about the uniqueness of each tiger, we can inspire greater compassion and understanding of their greatest threat: humans,” Abdellaoui said. The author also noted that the findings could offer information that could contribute to the conservation and survival of big cats, while exploring personality in other species could also foster an emotional connection.
