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Nature 447, 539-540 (31 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/447539a; Published online 30 May 2007

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Evolutionary biology: Animal personalities

Alison M. Bell1

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That different people differ in their readiness to take risks is an obvious feature of human personality. Theoretical advances now help in making sense of observations of analogous behaviour in animals.

Personality might seem to require a complexity and subtlety that is unique to humans. But evidence for individual variation in traits that we would recognize as personality, for example aggressiveness in fighting or boldness in the face of a predator, has cropped up in animals ranging from fish to monkeys to squid.

  1. Alison M. Bell is in the School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, 505 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
    Email: alisonmb@life.uiuc.edu

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