Animals have personalities. Here’s what shapes them.
Smadar Spector
Animals have personalities. Here’s what shapes them.
Popsci. 7 June 2026.
We tend to think of wild animals as being spared from the messy business of personality: the family dramas, the psychological wounds, the baffling quirks that keep resurfacing like whack-a-moles. Turns out, nobody gets out of that. Animals have personalities, too, and many of the same complex forces that shape our personalities shape theirs. “They’re not spared,” says Dr. Alison M. Bell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Illinois Urbana, tells Popular Science...
https://www.popsci.com/environment/do-animals-have-personalities/
We tend to think of wild animals as being spared from the messy business of personality: the family dramas, the psychological wounds, the baffling quirks that keep resurfacing like whack-a-moles.
Turns out, nobody gets out of that. Animals have personalities, too, and many of the same complex forces that shape our personalities shape theirs.
“They’re not spared,” says Dr. Alison M. Bell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Illinois Urbana, tells Popular Science. “Life is hard for them, too.”
But life is also “rich,” says Bell, full of ups and downs, wounds and triumphs, just like human lives.
It’s one of those truths that is both surprising and incredibly obvious, especially for those of us with pets. And yet the study of animals’ personalities has faced resistance—in part because accepting it means accepting that animals are far more like us than some are willing to admit.
Personality and social psychologist Dr. Sam Gosling noticed a telling pattern among his colleagues in animal research: On coffee breaks, they’d talk freely and enthusiastically about the personalities of the animals they studied, even their pets at home. Then the break would end.
“They’d finish their tea breaks, put on their scientist white coats, and stop any kind of talk about that,” he says.
But reluctance to engage with the topic scientifically doesn’t mean the evidence isn’t there. Decades of research across species has made one thing abundantly clear: Animals do have personalities. Here’s what the science has to say about what makes your pet special, whether they’re super smart, a risk taker, or a homebody.
1. Animals are shaped by their early environment
For animals, as for humans, the earliest experiences often form the deepest scars or the greatest strengths.
Animals are influenced by “the early life environment,” Bell says. “They’re influenced by their early interactions with parents and siblings.”
This principle is perhaps most evident in our pets. Bell cites an example familiar to many of us: the traumatized shelter dog with a troubled past.
“Pets who are coming from an animal shelter, or have maybe experienced abuse, they don’t forget that,” says Bell. “That leaves a lasting effect.”
Yet many of us don’t extend this understanding to, say, childhood trauma in a squirrel. But according to Bell, the same concepts apply to any animal, wild or domestic. A squirrel neglected by its mother carries that experience forward, just as we do.
“This principle definitely applies to other organisms,” says Bell.
2. Genetics are important, but not the main factor
As with humans, genetics are also an influential force in animal personality. Perhaps you might expect animals to be more genetically hardwired than us, driven by pure instinct and with few individual variations. But according to Bell, genetics accounts for only about 35 percent of animal personality—the same as in humans.
Teasing apart personality traits that come from genetics versus the environment is easier in animals than in humans, according to Gosling. For example, researchers can swap bird eggs between nests to determine whether chicks end up more like their genetic parents or the birds that raised them.
“Because of the experimental control that animal studies afford, our estimates of these effects can be much more precise than they can [be] in humans,” Gosling says. “In humans, we have to deal with them in the messy world.”
As for which matters more, genetics or environment, the answer is complicated.
“These studies have shown that there are genetic factors, environmental factors, biological non-genetic factors, and all kinds of other things that influence animal personality,” he says.
3. Personality varies by species
If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. (Will Rogers)
the wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. he is in front of it - axel munthe
"Never doubt that a small group of dedicated citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
Until every cage is empty. Until every animal is free
יש מלאכים שהצמיחו פרווה במקום כנפיים
התחברות אל בע"ח במקום לשלוט בהם מרוממת אותנו לכוכבים (ברברה קלו הנד)