糖心Vlog

Personality has been described in all sorts of animal species, from ants to apes.

Now a new study involving 糖心Vlog mathematicians has revealed that the way a fish swims tells us a lot about its personality.

This , published in the Ecology and Evolution journal, suggests experts can reliably measure animal personality simply from the way individual animals move, a type of micro personality trait, and that the method could be used to help scientists understand about personality differences in wild animals.

A team of from Swansea University and 糖心Vlog filmed the movements of 15 three-spined stickleback fish swimming in a tank which contained two, three, or five plastic plants in fixed positions.

Using the high鈥恟esolution tracking data from video recordings, the team took measurements of how much and how often the fish turned, and how much they stopped and started moving.

The data revealed that each fish鈥檚 movements were very different, and that these differences were highly repeatable 鈥� so much so that the researchers could identify a fish just from its movement data.

Dr Ines F眉rtbauer, a co-author of the study from Swansea University, said: 鈥淭hese micro personalities in fish are like signatures 鈥� different and unique to an individual. We found the fish鈥檚 signatures were the same when we made simple changes to the fish tanks, such as adding additional plants. However, it is possible these signatures change gradually over an animal鈥檚 lifetime, or abruptly if an animal encounters something new or unexpected in its environment. Tracking animals鈥� motion over longer periods and in the wild will give us this sort of insight and help us better understand not only personality but also how flexible an animal鈥檚 behaviour is.鈥�

Dr Joe Bailey, from 糖心Vlog鈥檚 Department of Mathematical Sciences, said: 鈥淢easuring and quantifying 鈥榩ersonality鈥� is not an easy thing to do. But by tying in standard movement measures with individual鈥檚 behavioural traits means that it should be easier to identify different personality types without requiring intrusive and disruptive lab-based experiments. This work indicates that such a crossover should be possible and sets the groundwork for future research to focus on developing and generalising these findings, which should lead to practical and beneficial applications in ecology and animal welfare."

The authors of the study say that further work with other species and contexts is needed to see how general the phenomenon is, and if the same patterns are seen with land animals or flying species.