Personality Assessment and Its Association With Genetic Factors in Captive<scp>A</scp>sian and<scp>A</scp>frican Elephants

Yasui, Saki; Konno, Akira; Tanaka, Masayuki; Idani, Gen’ichi; Ludwig, Arne; Lieckfeldt, Dietmar; Inoue‐Murayama, Miho

doi:10.1002/zoo.21045

Cited by 22 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…For example, differences in curiosity have been noted in elephants, based on keeper questionnaires (Freeman et al, 2004). Previous research has found different personality traits among the elephants in this study, in regards to interactions with their physical world (Highfill, Fad, Makecha, & Kuczaj, 2013;Yasui et al, 2013). Furthermore, estrous state may affect enrichment use, as estrous state has been shown to influence aggression and investigative behavior (Slade-Cain, Rasmussen, Schulte, 2008).…”

Section: Enrichment Usementioning

confidence: 55%

Diurnal and Nocturnal Activity Time Budgets of Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in a Zoological Park

Lukacs¹,

Poulin²,

Besenthal³

et al. 2016

AB&C

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-The diurnal and nocturnal activity time budgets of five adult female Asian elephants (Elephas maximus)were studied in a zoological park for two 24-hour, five 14-hour, and one 9-hour observation periods between May and June 2011. Relatively few studies have looked at detailed daytime and nighttime activity time budgets in captive Asian elephants. Continuous observation was used to measure the activity time budgets of at least one focal animal per observation period. The activity time budgets varied between animals and observation periods. The elephants spent 17-49% of the day (daylight hours) standing, 1-9% of the day walking, 19-44% of the day eating, and 1-20% of the day using enrichment items. At night, the elephants spent 29-87% of the observation period standing, 1-19% of the night eating, and 0.1-10% of the night using enrichment items. At night, elephants spent 0-45% of the observation period lying down. Variations in activity time budgets between elephants and observation periods have been observed in other studies of captive and wild elephants. Results of this observational study allow comparison between groups of captive elephants and between captive and wild elephants. Furthermore, results of this study can inform management strategies.

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Section: Enrichment Usementioning

confidence: 55%

Diurnal and Nocturnal Activity Time Budgets of Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in a Zoological Park

Lukacs¹,

Poulin²,

Besenthal³

et al. 2016

AB&C

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“…The relationship between dominance rank (position in a hierarchy) and related behaviours has been investigated in many species (for example; elephants (Loxodonta africana and Elephas maximus) [16], bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) [17], chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) [18][19][20][21], dogs (Canis familiaris) [15,[22][23][24][25][26][27], hyena (Crocuta crocuta) [28], gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) [29][30][31], female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) [32], great tits (Parus major) [33], 1158?m=178), all to EK. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assertive, trainable and older dogs are perceived as more dominant in multi-dog households

2020

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Social dominance is an important and widely used concept, however, different interpretations have led to ambiguity in the scientific literature and in popular science. Even though in ethology dominance is an attribute of dyadic encounters, and not a characteristic of the individual, 'dominance' has often been referred to as a personality trait in animals. Since few studies have specifically examined the link between personality traits and dominance status, we investigated this in dogs living in multi-dog households using a questionnaire, which required owners to specify whether the dog had a dominant or submissive status, and comprised items of both the features of the individual (i.e. personality traits) and previous social experience (interactions with group members and strangers). Four distinct personality factors emerged from 23 behavioural items by principal component analysis, labelled as assertiveness, trainability, intraspecific aggression and independence. Binomial logistic regression was used to examine how the demographic information of the dogs and the personality factors predicted the owner's estimate of the dog' status as dominant or submissive. The personality factor assertiveness accounted for 34% of the variance in dominance status, trainability 5% and dog age contributed 4%. Dogs perceived as dominant scored more highly on the factors assertiveness and trainability, which can help explain why 'dominance' has often been suggested to be a personality trait, rather than a dyad-specific social status according to different traditions in behavioural research. Similar to the 'social dominance' trait in humans, owner ascribed dominance showed a quadratic trajectory in cross-sectional mean change across the lifespan, increasing during adulthood and then maintaining high levels until old age. Overall, our study proposes a multifactorial background of dominance relationships in pet dogs, suggesting that not only previous experience of social interactions between individuals but also age and personality traits influence owner perceived dominance status in multi-dog households.

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“…We propose to address these questions using two complementary areas of research: the study of elephant behavior and cognition, and the study of elephant ecology and life history. Studies conducted both in Africa and Asia, with both captive and wild populations, show clear evidence for individual differences in a number of ecological and cognitive categories, including parasite load (Lynsdale et al, 2017), body size (Evans and Harris, 2012;Chapman et al, 2016), primiparity (Crawley et al, 2017), social hierarchy (McComb et al, 2011), innovation (Bates et al, 2008b), cooperation (Plotnik et al, 2011), problem-solving (Foerder et al, 2011), aggression (Poole, 1989), and personality (Lee and Moss, 2012;Yasui et al, 2012;Seltmann et al, 2018). Identifying whether or not specific behavioral, physical, demographic or personality traits (collected through future ecological, ethological and experimental research on captive and wild elephants) correlate with an elephant's propensity to crop-raid or engage in conflict may have important implications for preventing or managing these conflicts across different landscapes.…”

Section: Informing Hec Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If the reasons for differences in the type and level of conflict within and across range countries is not purely due to landscape and habitat differences, but instead has demographic, behavioral or personality-level implications, then focusing on influencing the elephants' decision-making process may be a novel approach to mitigating the conflicts across countries. For instance, by focusing on how elephants find food-for example, through research on their use of olfaction in both physical Von Dürckheim et al, 2018) and social (Bates et al, 2007a,b) contexts-and why they decide to enter risky crop fields where they may encounter humans, as well as individual differences in their personalities (Yasui et al, 2012;Seltmann et al, 2018), life history traits and problem-solving abilities, conservation planners could focus mitigation on particular elephants.…”

Section: Informing Hec Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking the Elephants' Perspective: Remembering Elephant Behavior, Cognition and Ecology in Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation

Mumby

Plotnik

2018

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Conflict between humans and wildlife is an increasing problem worldwide due to human population growth and habitat fragmentation, with growing interest amongst scientists and conservationists in developing novel solutions toward sustainable coexistence. Current efforts to mitigate human-wildlife conflict, however, are often unbalanced; they consider immediate human-centric concerns and offer deterrents against wildlife, rather than offering solutions to the underlying problems. Recently, there has been an increase in the number of calls to action for the integration of animal behavior, cognition and knowledge of individual variation into conservation practice. However, as elephant researchers, we have seen that most human-elephant conflict mitigation strategies employed in Asia and Africa are based on conditioning fear in elephants, or general monitoring of individual or group activities aimed at altering elephant movements, rather than understanding and providing for elephant and human needs. We see an opportunity to do more by investigating elephant behavior, cognition and ecology at the level of the individual to prevent conflict from occurring in the first place. Here, we review studies on elephants to illustrate this concept and to outline avenues for the application of research on elephant ecology, life history, behavior and personality to the development of new, comprehensive conservation strategies that take both human and elephant behavior into account.

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Personality Assessment and Its Association With Genetic Factors in CaptiveAsian andAfrican Elephants

Cited by 22 publications

References 40 publications

Diurnal and Nocturnal Activity Time Budgets of Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in a Zoological Park

Diurnal and Nocturnal Activity Time Budgets of Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in a Zoological Park

Assertive, trainable and older dogs are perceived as more dominant in multi-dog households

Taking the Elephants' Perspective: Remembering Elephant Behavior, Cognition and Ecology in Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation

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