Animals Have Personalities? No WAY!

When I started blogging in May of 2006 I was very snarky. Snark defined blogging back then. And of course, as a (pop) culture whose sensibility has been formed by The Onion and The Daily Show, it's no wonder.

My snarkiness increased, and turned into ranting, but then ranting for some reason got old. It's very, very easy for me to use language as a weapon; I've done that my whole life. While other people might trade barbs or even turn to fisticuffs, I'd dig deep for the most hurtful thing I could say, in the fewest words, and deliver it without even raising my voice.

Not a great quality, but dreadfully effective. It comes from a desire to not waste time. Whatever it is, I want to get it over with and move on. I'm a bit of an efficiency junkie.

The husband and I took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) a couple of months ago and received the most unremarkable results. He is, in fact, an extrovert (five minutes with him will tell you that), and I am indeed an introvert (ditto if you can catch me, as I will cross the street to avoid talking to you). The personality characteristics we were both deemed to have can all be found by observation as well as a 500+ question test.

Riddle me this: Why would any human animal use as a default position that nonhuman animals do not have personalities as rich, distinct, obnoxious, obsequious and varied as human animals? Have they not ever observed nonhuman animals?

I'm going to try hard to have this not become a rant, but "Even Among Animals: Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers," by Natalie Angier in yesterday's New York Times begins with "even." Why "even?" Why is it surprising that nonhuman animals have personalities when human animals do? We're all animals, aren't we? We're sentient. We think, we plan, we make choices. Why can't some of us be daredevils? Or "even" obnoxious?

Angier writes:

"Scientists studying animals from virtually every niche of the bestial kingdom have found evidence of distinctive personalities — bundled sets of behaviors, quirks, preferences and pet peeves that remain stable over time and across settings."

Look, I think it's great that scientists are observing the nonhuman world and reporting back to us that we are in fact all animals and as such we all have personalities (though I don't really get that vibe as the angle). This is great news for animal rights because it's one more piece of evidence that humans aren't as exceptional as we like to think we are.

Inevitably, there's this:

"Some critics complain that the term 'animal personality' is a bit too slick, while others worry that the entire enterprise smacks of that dread golem of biology, anthropomorphism — assigning human traits to nonhuman beings."

That's the kind of nonsense that makes me want to scream. No one is assigning human traits to nonhumans. They are saying (and at least I am saying, and Marc Bekoff has said): "It isn't that we set out looking for humanlike traits in animals and hope to find some. Rather, we set out to understand what animals are like, and use the language and concepts that come closest to describing what we see" (Wild Justice, 41). At least there is a similar response given by the scientists in this article who study animals.

A bit of what I would consider bad news for animal rights is:

"Reporting in this month’s issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers from the University of Glasgow addressed the widespread concern that the findings of animal personality studies, so often performed on captive subjects, may be laboratory artifacts, with scant relevance to how the creatures behave in nature."

Researchers conducted experiments in a lab, then released the animals into the wild, making sure to note that "This was a much harder part of the study, and involved lugging around of batteries," and found similar results. Angier can't resist writing: "A bird in the lab worked like a bird in the bush." So working outside of the lab is more difficult and yields the same results. That's the perfect argument for keeping animals in a lab if your priority is you and your research rather than the animals and what's best for them.

I'd be remiss, snark-wise, if I didn't bring attention to a hypothesis of the scientists:

"Scientists suspect that small inherited predispositions are either enhanced or suppressed by experience, and computer models show that tiny discrepancies at the start can become enormous over time, through feedback loopings of positive reinforcement."

Methinks scientists would express the same suspicion of humans, and they might even use the similar language.

The end of the article stumped me:

"Highly sensitive pigs squeal a lot; highly sensitive people feel a lot. Sure, it’s painful at times. But just switch on some Bach and I’ll squeal my thanks for thin skin."

The attempt to be cute notwithstanding, I'm confused. Highly sensitive pigs squeal, yet highly sensitive people feel a lot. Does that supposed to mean that the pigs are "vocalizing" for no reason? Isn't there any feeling at the origin of that squealing? "Sure, it's painful at times," for Angier, so she switches Bach on. What about the pig? Didn't she just provide support for how acutely pigs feel? Little help, here?

Angier mentions neophobia, which, as you might imagine, is the fear of novelty. What's the word for fear that human animals aren't all that much different from nonhuman animals and humans' continuous attempts to not recognize the obvious?