Amur tigers, like people, have pronounced personality traits. Certainly, unlike humans, these felines have not five, but two of these basic characteristics, according to the study. published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
In psychology, to assess a person’s personality, the so-called “Big Five” model is often used, which, through five relatively independent common traits, makes it possible to characterize a person. It consists of the following traits: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience.
An international team of scientists led by Dr. Abdel Abdellaoui from the University of Amsterdam set out to find out if an analogue of the “Big Five” could be applied to describing the characters of Amur tigers.
To do this, the scientists asked the staff of two Chinese nature reserves, veterinarians and food vendors, to describe the nature of the tigers living there, using a set of 70 Chinese words, for example, adaptable, stubborn, stupid, honest and others. “These words are all Chinese, so there may be cultural and linguistic differences that can cause difficulties in translating the words,” Abdellawi explained. In the first reserve, the characters of 152 tigers were described, each of which was assessed by at least three employees, in the second – 96 animals.
An analysis of the questionnaires showed that most of the factors can be attributed to two main character traits – majesty and poise. Epithets describing the first characteristic included “proud”, “stately”, “mobile”, the second – “gentle”, “obedient”, “quiet”.
“If I had to choose which human trait is most reminiscent of a tiger, I would probably compare majesty to extroversion, and poise to the opposite of neuroticism,” Abdellawi explained.
Further analysis showed that tigers with the highest scores on the majesty scale were, on average, healthier, more likely to hunt live prey, eat more and mate more often, and had a higher social status in the group.
