Anne McIlroy
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Oct. 09, 2009 4:41PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009 1:21AM EDT
You can tell a lot about the personality of a bighorn sheep by trying to wrestle one to the ground.
The aggressive animals, like the ram nicknamed Psycho, put up a fight every time. The docile ones never require a half-nelson: They freeze as soon as they are touched and calmly sit down.
Researchers who trap, weigh and measure the bighorn sheep every summer in the mountains near Nordegg, Alta., have been kicked and dragged by the more combative beasts. The scientists are taking part in a Ram Mountain trap-and-release study, started in 1972, that has provided crucial data about the growth and health of the bighorn sheep population. In recent years, the study has also offered Canadian biologists a remarkable opportunity to investigate personality differences in the 125-kilogram animals.
Not many researchers study personalities in wild animals, a field that until relatively recently was dismissed by critics as a foolish attempt to attribute human characteristics to other creatures. But since the early 1990s, biologists have demonstrated that hyenas, chimps, squirrels, birds, octopuses, fish and spiders have measurable personality differences. They can be shy or bold, aggressive or passive, loners or social.
A number of studies – including a recent paper on the Ram Mountain bighorn sheep – have demonstrated that these traits have a strong genetic component.
In their study in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, researchers from the University of Sherbrooke and the University of Alberta report that more aggressive rams and ewes tended to have offspring that were also fighters. The more docile ones had lambs that were more likely to grow up to be easygoing.
Now, they are looking for genes linked to those traits. If they are successful, their work could explain behaviour in other species too.
“The question is: Are the same genes that are influencing behaviour in sheep in humans?” Jocelyn Poissant says. A doctoral student, he spent three summers wrestling sheep. This year, however, he stayed in the lab to analyze their DNA. It was easier on his knees.
No comments:
Post a Comment