Majestic tigers: personality structure in the great Amur cat

Abstract

We explore individual differences in tiger personality. We first asked—is there evidence of personality dimensions (analogous to the Big Five in human personality research) in the Amur tiger? We then asked, are any discoverable personality dimensions associated with measured outcomes, including group status, health and mating frequency? 152 of our participating tigers live in the world's largest semi-wild tiger sanctuary in North Eastern China. Our second sample of 96 tigers also lives in a sanctuary. Having two samples allowed us to assess the replicability of the personality dimensions or factors reported in our first sample. We found that two factors (explaining 21% and 17% of the variance among items) which we call, for descriptive ease, Majesty and Steadiness, provide the best fit to the data. Tigers that score higher on Majesty are healthier, eat more live prey, have higher group status (among other tigers as assessed by human raters) and mate more often. We provide some ethological context to put flesh on the quantitative bones of our findings concerning these magnificent and charismatic animals.

Keywords

• tiger
• animal personality
• animal behaviour
• cats
• great cats
• conservation