The wonderful thing about tigers is their 'majestic' or 'steady' personalities

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-04-05 09:01

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Winnie the Pooh's bouncy buddy Tigger is chock full of personality, but what about real tigers? Well, international researchers say Siberian tigers, also known as Amur tigers, have distinct personalities and tend to fall into one of two types, which they've called 'majestic' or 'steady'. The team asked staff at two Chinese wildlife sanctuaries to fill out personality questionnaires for 248 of the big cats, and identified two groupings of personality traits. Majestic tigers are energetic and competitive, while steady tigers are sincere, loving and flexible, and these traits account for 38% of the differences seen in behaviour in individual tigers, the researchers say. The most 'majestic' tigers were also the healthiest, hungriest, horniest and highest-status beasts, they add. Siberian tigers are rare, so the team hopes their findings will aid in conservation efforts and breeding programs.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

The ‘i’ of the tiger - Majestic tigers: Personality structure in the great Amur cat

Summary: Do tigers have personality? Yes! We explored personality in two samples of Amur or Siberian tigers. This hasn’t been done before in a semi wild setting. We found that two dimensions, which we call Majesty and Steadiness, capture a pattern that distinguishes among these tigers’ personalities. Discovering new facts about the individuality of animals can promote their welfare; it also teaches us about their basic biology. Amur tigers are rare so this project which assessed 248 tigers is useful for science and for conservation.

The ‘i’ of the tiger – Do tigers have personalities? In the first investigation in a semi-wild setting, staff at two Chinese wildlife sanctuaries completed personality questionnaires for roughly 250 tigers. The researchers identified two groupings of traits, ‘Majesty’ (e.g. majestic, energetic, competitive) and ‘Steadiness’ (e.g. sincere, loving, flexible), that could account for 38% of behaviour difference in the assessed tigers. Tigers scoring higher in Majesty were assessed as healthier, higher status and ate and mated more.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: London School of Economics, UK

Funder: This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 32071075 and 31872782). We thank The de Laszlo Foundation for supporting the development of this manuscript.

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