• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

New research shows long-term personality traits influence problem-solving in zebra finches

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
June 3, 2022
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Zebra finches
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Personality is not unique to humans. New research published in the Royal Society Open Science journal demonstrates that zebra finches have personalities, and some traits are consistent over two years of the birds’ lives.

Zebra finches

Credit: Lisa Barrett

Personality is not unique to humans. New research published in the Royal Society Open Science journal demonstrates that zebra finches have personalities, and some traits are consistent over two years of the birds’ lives.

In addition to showing stable personality, zebra finches innovated solutions to novel foraging tasks, where sometimes success was related to personality type.

The article was written by Lisa Barrett and Jessica Marsh, of the University of Wyoming; Neeltje Boogert, of the University of Exeter; Christopher Templeton, of Pacific University Oregon; and Sarah Benson-Amram, of the University of British Columbia, formerly of UW and the leader of UW’s Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab.

The authors of the paper tested 41 zebra finches at UW from 2016-18 to measure individual differences in the birds’ behavior through time.

The authors measured a host of traits — dominance, boldness, activity, risk-taking, aggressiveness and obstinacy — in the short term (two weeks) and the long term (two years), using standardized personality tests that had been established in the literature.

To assess boldness, for example, the authors placed a novel object in an enclosure with a bird that had been feeding and measured how long it took the bird to resume feeding in the presence of the novel object. To assess dominance, the authors recorded interactions of groups of birds at a single feeder. The authors measured obstinacy — or docility — while handling the birds by counting the number of escape attempts the birds made beneath a net.

Videos of the assessments used in this study may be viewed here.

“We were interested to see if personality would remain stable or if individuals would be flexible in their behavior over time,” says Barrett, the lead author. “Repeating our tests over two years with the exact same birds allowed us to answer that question.”

Barrett and colleagues found that not all traits were equally consistent. Of the traits they measured, many traits were consistent over two weeks, but only boldness and obstinacy were consistent over two years.

Next, the researchers tested whether personality related to problem-solving success on three novel tasks previously used with zebra finches.

“Since individuals vary in their personality type and in their cognitive ability, we wanted to see if these two sources of variation were linked,” says Marsh, who was an undergraduate at the time she worked on the study.

The authors found that problem-solving success related to boldness, dominance and obstinacy. For example, less dominant birds were more likely to solve two of the tasks compared to their more dominant counterparts. This result provides support for the “necessity drives innovation” hypothesis, which states that less dominant individuals — who receive fewer resources due to competition with their flock mates — may need to innovate new ways to access food.

“In this work, we leveraged a comprehensive suite of personality tests and multiple cognitive tasks, and we carried out our work over a longer period of time than traditional tests,” Benson-Amram says. “This allowed us to uncover the importance of measuring multiple traits for understanding the link between personality and problem-solving.”

Because not all traits were consistent over time or related to problem-solving performance, the authors emphasize that future research should focus on uncovering which measures of personality are most important for innovation — and why some traits are more plastic than others.



Journal

Royal Society Open Science

DOI

10.1098/rsos.212001

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Links between personality traits and problem-solving performance in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata)

Article Publication Date

1-Jun-2022

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Elizabeth Hinde and Jorge Alegre-Cebollada Named Recipients of 2026 Michael and Kate Bárány Award

September 23, 2025
Revolutionary 3D-Printed Glass Emerging as a New Bone Substitute

Revolutionary 3D-Printed Glass Emerging as a New Bone Substitute

September 23, 2025

DGIST Pioneers “Artificial Plant” Technology to Purify Radioactive Soil Using Only Sunlight

September 23, 2025

Innovative PFAS Filtration Technology Developed for Ball Mill Applications

September 23, 2025

POPULAR NEWS

  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    69 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 17
  • Tailored Gene-Editing Technology Emerges as a Promising Treatment for Fatal Pediatric Diseases

    50 shares
    Share 20 Tweet 13
  • Scientists Achieve Ambient-Temperature Light-Induced Heterolytic Hydrogen Dissociation

    49 shares
    Share 20 Tweet 12
  • Rapid Spread of Drug-Resistant Fungus Candidozyma auris in European Hospitals Prompts Urgent Warning from ECDC

    48 shares
    Share 19 Tweet 12

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Notable Surge in Low- and Alcohol-Free Drink Consumption Among High-Risk UK Drinkers Over Five Years

Study Reveals Regular Exercise ‘Rewires’ Heart-Control Nerves Differently on Left and Right Sides

Even Moderate Alcohol Consumption May Elevate Dementia Risk, Study Finds

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.