Males have more aggressive and less sociable personalities than females in semi-captive Asian elephants

Abstract

Personality, i.e. consistent between-individual differences in behaviour, has been documented in many species. Yet little is known about how males and females of long-lived, highly social species differ in their measures of personality structure. We investigated sex differences in the mean, variance, and covariance of three previously reported personality traits (Attentiveness, Sociability, Aggressiveness) in 150 female and 107 male Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ) from a semi-captive population in Myanmar. These three personality traits were obtained by performing exploratory factor analysis on 28 behavioural items that had been rated by experienced elephant handlers. We found that males scored significantly higher on Aggressiveness and tended to score lower on Sociability than females. However, no sex difference was found in the mean scores of Attentiveness. Variances for the three personality traits did not differ between the sexes, suggesting that male and female elephants share the same range of personality variation. Likewise, trait covariances were similar between the sexes. While both sexes show complex sociality in the wild, female Asian elephants typically live in highly social family units, whereas male elephants’ social bonds are weaker. Males usually form dominance ranks by aggressive interactions, especially during musth. Our results on a large sample of individuals living in their natural environment are thus in agreement with elephant life-histories and parallel the findings of sex differences in other long-lived highly social species with similar life-histories.

Faecal Glucocorticoid Metabolites and H/L Ratio Are Related Markers of Stress in Semi-Captive Asian Timber Elephants

“…Another key result we discovered is that the correlation between the two measures of stress was robust in both sexes, despite males having slightly higher FGM concentrations than females. In this population, males also display different behavioural patterns [66], have a higher overall mortality [46], and a higher parasite-associated mortality [67] across all ages. In general, this is not surprising: Sex can affect stress and stress responses [16,17].…”

No behavioral syndromes or sex‐specific personality differences in the southern rainforest sunskink (Lampropholis similis)

“…Recent studies have documented sexual differences in a range of other behavioral syndromes (Rangel‐Patiño et al., 2018). For instance, female Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ) are typically less aggressive, but more sociable, compared to males (Seltmann et al., 2019). Similarly, in African penguins ( Sphensiscus demersus ), a relationship between boldness and foraging behavior was observed in females, but not males (Traisnel & Pichegru, 2019).…”

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

“…As in humans, vervet and rhesus monkey females played longer with dolls and plush toys, and males played longer with wheeled toys ( Christov-Moore et al, 2014 ). Asian elephant females tend to be more social and gregarious than males, suggesting that females are more affectionate and seek out others and are sought out by others as company ( Seltmann et al, 2019 ). Human and non-human primate females engage in social grooming more often than males do ( Lonsdorf, 2017 ).…”