...in yesterday's Science Times, "Even Among Animals: Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers." It's about:
...the burgeoning field of animal personality research, the effort to understand why individual members of the same species can be so mulishly themselves, and so unlike one another on a wide variety of behavioral measures. Scientists studying animals from virtually every niche of the bestial kingdom have found evidence of distinctive personalities — bundled sets of behaviors, quirks, preferences and pet peeves that remain stable over time and across settings. They have found stylistic diversity in chimpanzees, monkeys, barnacle geese, farm minks, blue tits and great tits, bighorn sheep, dumpling squid, pumpkinseed sunfish, zebra finches, spotted hyenas, even spiders and water striders, to name but a few. They have identified hotheads and tiptoers, schmoozers and loners, divas, dullards and fearless explorers, and they have learned that animals, like us, often cling to the same personality for the bulk of their lives (my emphasis). The daredevil chicken of today is the one out crossing the road tomorrow.
So it's settled, then: nature trumps nuture. Or does it? The article goes on to say that:
Scientists suspect that small inherited predispositions are either enhanced or suppressed by experience (me again), and computer models show that tiny discrepancies at the start can become enormous over time, through feedback loopings of positive reinforcement.
The debate continues...
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