Bold personality makes domestic dogs entering a shelter less vulnerable to diseases

Abstract

It is widely recognised that for vertebrate species, personalities vary along an axis with extremes represented by ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive‘ individuals. The aim of this study was to verify whether there is a relationship between personality and disease vulnerability in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) exposed to an intensely stressful situation such as entering a shelter. Twenty-eight shelter dogs participated in the study. The ethogram consisted of approximately 100 behavioural patterns. Behavioural observations of dogs in their new environment, a Novel Object and a T-maze test were used to evaluate the personality of the dogs captured as strays and entering the shelter. A blood sample from each dog was obtained at admission into the shelter and after a month to evaluate their immunological state. Based on PCA analyses of observational combined with experimental data, the dogs were ordered along the boldness-shyness axis, with the first being the boldest. Excluding one (the 6th), the first 10 dogs showed an improved health status: absence of disease symptoms during the 30 days of monitoring and improved immunological parameters; the opposite was found for shy dogs. The results of this research seem to confirm findings in other vertebrate species, i.e., bold and shy dog vulnerability to diseases might be different, especially when they must cope with a stressful and highly infectious environment such as a dog shelter.

Immune response of hibernating European bats to a fungal challenge

“…We measured higher ROM levels in zymosan-treated bats, but these levels were already higher right from the first sampling and did not show further increases during the following days, which renders interpretation difficult. It might be that the concentration of ROMs is linked to haptoglobin and haptoglobin inhibited the increases due to its anti-oxidant effect (Sauerwein et al, 2005; van de Crommenacker et al, 2010; Corsetti et al, 2018). It is therefore conceivable that an increase in ROMs took place during the first arousal early in the experiment as a response against the antigen.…”

“…P -values were adjusted for multiple comparisons by using Tukey's method in the ‘emmeans’ package (Lenth et al, 2019). Because haptoglobin may correlate with ROM (Corsetti et al, 2018; Sauerwein et al, 2005; van de Crommenacker et al, 2010), the relationship was calculated by using the Pearson's rank correlation for each treatment group.…”

Behavioral predictors of subsequent respiratory illness signs in dogs admitted to an animal shelter

“…However, they found that dogs displaying the proactive style (higher boldness, higher sociability) had a lower incidence of illness; our current results seem to be contrary to this previous data. However, Corsetti et al[26] did not find any statistically significant predictors when assessing individual traits, such as boldness, activity, sociability, or anxiety; the lack of statistically significant correlations among individual traits to illness may have been due to a relatively small sample size. Additional research may be needed to reconcile these contrary findings.…”

“…For example, Svartberg and Forkman[36] suggested that various traits, such as sociability and exploration, among others, may be related to a single higher-order dimension. Corsetti and colleagues[26] have also combined the individual traits of activity, attentiveness, dominance, and sociability to differentiate dogs into proactive and reactive coping styles. However, they found that dogs displaying the proactive style (higher boldness, higher sociability) had a lower incidence of illness; our current results seem to be contrary to this previous data.…”

“…Recently, Corsetti et al[26] have suggested that dogs displaying a bold personality were less susceptible to diseases in the animal shelter. The researchers assessed 28 dogs for one month at the shelter.…”