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.

SUBMITTER: Seltmann MW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6390182 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature