Personality structure in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus).

Abstract

for logistical support, and to Chloe Weatherill for translating the questionnaire into Spanish. Collection of data from Curaçao was partly funded by an honorarium awarded to Alexander Weiss by the Association for the Study of Animal Behavior, and funding DOLPHIN PERSONALITY 2 by Geoff Hosey and Sabrina Brando through AnimalConcepts. Finally, we thank Colin DeYoung and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Evolution of Consciousness

“…We share this sense of selfhood and self-recognition with other animals, including great apes [5], monkeys [6], elephants [7], dolphins [8], and cleaner fish [9]. This convergent evolution of cognitive abilities in such a diverse group of animals suggests that sentience is already present at the time of our last common ancestor with great apes about 13 million years ago [10], with monkeys about 20 million years ago [11], with elephants about 60 million years ago [12], with dolphins about 95 million years ago [13], and with fish about 375 million years ago [14]. Our evolutionary history may be traced even further back in time to the last common ancestor of humans with other living organisms, which is a single cell about 3.8 billion years ago [15][16][17][18][19], and ingenious chemical experiments have revealed that eventually the first life forms could have arisen from non-living matter under primitive earth conditions [20,21].…”

Dominance in human (Homo sapiens) personality space and in hominoid phylogeny.

“…The evidence is also mixed in cetaceans. Morton et al (2021) did not find a dominance factor in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncates), which live in societies that are not characterized by contest-based hierarchies (Shane et al, 1986). On the other hand, although killer whales (Orcinus orca) also do not live in strongly hierarchical societies (Ford et al, 2011), they possess a dominance factor (Úbeda et al, 2019).…”