Emergence of personality in weaning‐age kittens of the domestic cat?

Abstract

Individual differences in behavior (animal personality) have recently received much attention although less so in young mammals. We tested 74 preweaning‐age kittens from 16 litters of domestic cats in five everyday contexts repeated three times each across a 3‐week period: a handling test where an experimenter held the kitten, a test where a piece of raw beef was given to the kitten and gradually withdrawn, a test where the kitten was presented with a live mouse in a jar, a test where the kitten was briefly confined in a pet carrier, and an encounter with an unfamiliar human who first remained passive and then attempted to stroke the kitten. We found consistent individual differences in behavior in all tests except with the mouse, although less marked than in equivalent tests with adult cats. Differences in behavior were unrelated to sex, body mass, litter size, or maternal identity. We found only weak correlations in results among the tests (behavioral syndromes), again unlike findings in adult cats. We conclude that weanling kittens show consistent individual differences in behavior but in a different manner to adults. If and how the pattern of such differences changes across development remains to be studied.

Development of “personality” in the domestic cat: A longitudinal study

“…In the case of the companion cats of the present study, they may have learned not to direct stomping and swiping toward humans by the time they were juveniles and adults; this could explain the reduced occurrence of these behaviors, which fell from 42% of trials at preweaning to 16% at 12 months, and eventually their complete absence in a subset of individuals measured at 18 months (although data of 18‐month old individuals were not included in this report; see Data Availability Statement). In addition, while preweaning age kittens often hissed or growled during the meat test (Urrutia et al., 2022a), we did not observe this behavior in any other age group in the present study. Therefore, food defense‐related behaviors may be best studied when they are directed toward a conspecific rather than an experimenter or an object.…”

“…In previous research by our group, we found repeatable individual differences in behavior, but no behavioral syndromes, in preweaning age domestic kittens tested in a range of situations relevant for companion animals (Urrutia et al, 2022a). We also previously found consistent individual differences in behavior among adult mixed-breed cats tested in the same situations, and evidence of a behavioral syndrome, which appeared to be driven by differences in human-oriented behaviors (Martínez-Byer et al, 2020;Urrutia et al, 2019).…”

“…For details on how cats were kept, see Urrutia et al. (2022a). At 8 weeks of age the kittens were given away as pets to people living in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area.…”

“…We measured seven behavioral variables (described in Table 1) from four behavioral tests intended to resemble real‐life situations for cats kept as companion animals, which we have previously used to examine individual differences in the behavior of kittens (Urrutia et al., 2022a) and adult cats (Martínez‐Byer et al., 2020; Urrutia et al., 2019). These tests examined the cats’ reactions to being handled (struggle/handling test), food and food defense situations (meat test), potential prey (mouse test), and brief confinement (separation/confinement test).…”

“…The aim of the present study was to investigate if the consistent individual differences in behavior shown previously by preweaning domestic kittens (Urrutia et al., 2022a, b) in a series of standardized behavioral tests remain consistent across development into adulthood. We also aimed to explore the possibility that behavioral syndromes, which were absent during early life (Urrutia et al., 2022a, b), would emerge during later development. We predicted that individuals would show consistent individual differences in behavior across development and that these differences would increase, that is consolidate, with age (cf.…”