Dolphins: Study finds humans share personality traits with dolphins
- Published
- comments
Dolphins are friendly and intelligent animals but now researchers have found that they share a number of similar personality traits with humans.
A study looked at dolphins' personalities and discovered that they share similar behaviour with humans, such as curiosity and sociability, even though their environment is very different.
The project studied 134 bottlenose dolphins from around the world and assessed each dolphin's personality by giving a questionnaire to staff who knew the dolphins well.
The team of researchers chose to look at dolphins because they are intelligent animals, similar to primates that live in social groups, but they are very different in other ways.
The study has helped researchers understand how some human personality traits can develop regardless of environments. These similarities were found even though dolphins live in the sea and haven't shared a common ancestor with primates for 95 million years.
Dr Blake Morton, the lead author of the study, said this was the first time dolphin personalities had been studied this way.
Dr Morton said: "Dolphins were a great animal for this kind of study because, like primates, dolphins are intelligent and social. We reasoned that if factors such as intelligence and gregariousness contribute to personality, then dolphins should have similar personality traits to primates."
Dolphins, like many primates, have brains that are considerably larger than what their bodies require for basic bodily functions; this excess of brain matter essentially powers their ability to be intelligent, and intelligent species are often very curious.
A widely used model of human personality is defined by five traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Many studies have looked at how primates share these characteristics but this study looks at animals in very different settings.
Dr Morton added: "We've known for some time that dolphins are similar to us in other respects - for instance, you can just watch dolphins on television and see they're very obviously smart and social."
Although the study showed that dolphins are similar to humans, the research did not find that they were identical.
Dr Morton said: "I don't want people to misinterpret that and say humans and dolphins have the same personality traits - they don't. It's just that some of them are similar."
56 male and 78 female dolphins from eight countries, including Mexico, France, Sweden and the Bahamas were assessed for the study.
- Published12 August 2019
- Published21 February 2021
- Published27 April 2020
