Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes: The Science of Animal Personalities

by John Shivik

In Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes, Shivik serves as an accessible, humorous guide to the emerging body of research on animal personalities. Shivik accompanies researchers who are discovering that each wolf, bear, and coyote has an inherent tendency to favor either its aggressive nature or to shyly avoid conflicts. Some bluebirds are lovers, others are fighters. And some spiders prefer to be loners, while others are sociable. Unique personalities can be discovered in every corner of the animal kingdom--even among microscopic organisms. The array of personality types among all species is only beginning to be described and understood.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Animals, Nature

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two things disappointed me about this book. Firstly, which of us doesn't believe that animals have different personalities? We all know that our pets, cats, dogs, horses and chickens (I was going to say 'even chickens' but it should be 'especially chickens', hens are very individual creatures) have their own unique personalities, so I don't need convincing in a book full of anecdotes.

And that is the second point, too many anecdotes not enough science. I like a steak underneath the sauce.

What did bring the book from an average 3 star to a 4 star was the evolutionary reason for different personalities which might be obvious to a lot of people, but I hadn't thought of it. It is easy to see how true it is of people, so obviously of animals too.

Physical adaptions to the environment, which is what we all understand about evolution, take a very long time. As the book puts it, "bodies transmogrify more slowly than glaciers advance and recede." But behaviour allows each individual to adapt to the conditions it finds itself in. Because the environment varies so much even in one location - weather, food, enemies, disease, etc. a variety of personalities means that some at least are likely to adapt their behaviour and not just survive but learn from their environment and do well.

In yesterday's Daily Rag (aka the scurrilous Daily Mail) was a story of a gorilla in a zoo who had made shoes, or at least foot coverings, so he didn't get his feet wet. The other gorillas hadn't thought of that. But some person far back in the human chain did too, or maybe we got it from gorillas!

So because of that insight, and I love non-fiction for those ah-ha moments, it gets 4 stars, but I wouldn't really recommend it.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is primarily a refutation of earlier centuries' staunch support of animal behaviorists as typified by B. F. Skinner and the principles of problem-solving as typified by Occam's Razor and Morgon's Canon. Animal behavior was always to be explained as simply as possible. Any hint of anthropomorphism was strongly frowned upon. Earlier "dogma" thus described, the author moves on to more current ways of studying personality types, exemplified by the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator classification system. Animal behavior studies today often build on similar classification techniques. Such studies are then sorted into four different chapters for the four personality traits bellicosity, sociability, activity levels and the propensity to explore. Each chapter thus consists of a broad survey of scientific studies collected into that chapter where they best fit. Dogs and birds and cats and horses and snakes and reptiles and insects and spiders and dolphins and whales and more are all spoken of. Many personal anecdotes fill out the respective chapters. There is a discussion of how evolution favors diversity and why animal studies are of importance to man. The book ends with a mushy chapter to pull your heart-strings. It is included to emphasize the importance of the bonds we share with our pets. We are given a nod to the emotional bond between the author and his cat Pinguino as well as a eulogy to his beloved dog Gretchen.

That is the book. It offers a broad survey of the growing number of studies dealing with animal intelligence and emotion. There is value in this alone, but I personally have already read about many of the studies mentioned. Similarly, the author refers to books which I have already read. Few of the many studies mentioned are covered in detail; we are merely told of the conclusions drawn. None of them are critically analyzed for possible faults or weaknesses. This book is best seen as a broad survey and it does not touch upon experiment results that conflict with the author’s views. While I am not opposing the tenets expressed, I would have appreciate more critical analysis. This would have made the book more objective.

The volume reads as a book of popular science. The general public, readers with little knowledge of the field, is the books prime audience. Furthermore, I personally object to the cursing and hip language used by the author. To start off a book with a sentence containing “asshole” is just not necessary! I often objected to the author choice of words and his manner of relating events. I cannot get around this.

Personality traits are described with words I found diffuse and too often unclear. A plethora of words are used for the same personality trait.

I have given the audiobook narration by Jonathan McClain two stars. He reads too rapidly. I needed time to think about the conclusions presented. I had to rewind way too many times.

In conclusion, I am glad that more attention is beginning to be focused upon the valuable studies conducted on animal behavior, intelligence and emotions. Animals do have intelligence and they do perceive and react to the world around them in fascinating ways. They do have emotions and it is time we acknowledge emotions other than our own. The bonds we share with our pets are vital and their value should be recognized. The book shows this through engaging / interesting case studies and anecdotes.

[Fiona · Rating 2 out of 5]

At least one review for this book asserted that it may be too academic for some people's tastes. I disagree. For me, this book's highest moments were those all-too-brief instances in which Shivik stopped tossing out inane anecdotes, thinly-veiled insults towards the "shackled" scientists who disagree with his views, and prose so pointlessly purple that Anish Kapoor is no longer permitted to paint with it, so that he could actually DESCRIBE SOME GOSH DARNED RESEARCH.

Don't get me wrong, as a Wildlife Biology graduate and an animal lover, I agree with a lot of what Shivik is describing here. I might not agree with the idea that being able to identify two or three behavioural variants within a species actually warrants the description of "personality" , but, for the most part, I see where he's coming from. Some scientists have been blinkered by the pressure to reduce animals into nothing more than biological machines, with brains inherently inferior to the human mind. I disagree, however, with the massive assumption that this means that most (or even many) scientists do not believe in variance amongst individuals.

Anyone who has had contact with more than one animal in their lives, be they cherished pets or lab animals, knows that animals vary within a species. There is no conspiracy to hide this fact. Variation within species is, however, under-represented in behavioural studies not least because, in practise, most studies deal with population trends rather than individual behaviours.

I honestly cannot get my head around why this book was written. Actually, scratch that, it was written for the general public with an emphasis on heart warming (but ultimately scientifically worthless) personal anecdotes, stories about women who think their horses are capable of communicating with them telepathically, and long navel-gazing descriptions of glorious, glorious non sequiturs that mean nothing and go nowhere. I really should have copped on to that when Sy Montgomery's name cropped up twice on the cover alone.

The two stars are essentially for the parts of the book in which actual research is discussed and for the admittedly heartwarming and tear-jerking descriptions of Pinguino and Gretchen respectively. I love animals. I honestly believe that variance among individual animals is a subject that needs more research. But I did not particularly enjoy this book.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 4 out of 5]

While most of us firmly believe that animals have distinctive, individual, personalities it still remains outside the realm of most accepted science. Science is still very reluctant to admit that animals commonly function beyond simple instinctive responses. While "everyone" knows certain animals are capable of higher level though (great apes, corvids, pigs) we are reluctant to afford that luxury across the board, as increasing discoveries and common sense seems to dictate and allow the bastion of personality to be thrust upon the lesser species (i.e. fish, insects, reptiles, all rodents, etc.) This level of cognitive dissonance is ultimately doing a disservice both to the animals in question and to ourselves. There's a lot we could learn from things like the way native bees structure their societies, the complex social networks the lions, wolves, and prairie dogs have. The way that others see the world.

The book provides a wealth of information both scientific and anecdotal to support the idea that animals have personalities. The bulk of the research that is presented has been done on rather unexpected creatures - spiders. While the information about cougars cooperating more than not was not so surprising to me, as I had heard similar stories when I visited the Big Cat Rescue, the information about spiders was truly fascinating. Things we take for granted such as the sexual cannibalism of the species wasn't necessarily true 100% or even 50% of the time. Isolating what compelled the females to act in such a way, and why it might be so, raised many more questions. Like the Stanford Prison Experiments, so much of the data we take for granted is both inaccurate and damaging to our very view of the world. Cooperation is the rule more than conflict, only extreme cases get more press... without the accompanying data to show that it is common-place practice.

The book does a wonderful job of explaining why personalities would be the rule over predictable behavior - variability is better for evolutionary practices than animals acting in predictable ways - and while that may seem obvious, it's an argument I've never seen laid out so neatly before. The book is a bit too dry and full of higher level writing to be a popular science book, unfortunately. An it's a bit too full of anecdotes to be fully accepted by the scientific crowd. Nevertheless, I think its an important and interesting text and I look forward to other writers picking up the baton and preaching the Animals Have Personalities message until the cognitive dissonance fades.

[Chrissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an impulse check-out from the library when I popped in to pick up my reserved books. How could I resist? I mean, am I not the owner of a particularly mousy cat? Have I not seen a sheepish coyote wondering around my neighborhood?

Ultimately, I think the title of the book is misleading. What Shivik calls "The Science of Animal Personalities" is essentially an abridged, 170-page version of an undergrad Animal Behavior 101 course. If you are interested in abbreviated descriptions of studies that observed behavioral variations in a wide range of animals (spiders, lizards, birds [ahhh, the ever-present great tit], wolves, etc) with cute little tidbits/stories on Shivik's own personal cat & dog peppered throughout, this is the book for you. For those with knowledge of animal behavior, be forewarned that Shivik did not go in depth when describing these studies, in what I imagine was an attempt to make this a "popular science" book (although I think it's too heavy-handed and disorganized to really serve as one, and I often skimmed over Shivik's overarching claims and connections between animal and human behavior). Based on the few studies Shivik covered that I was familiar with, I suspect a lot of detail was left out (e.g. the friendly foxes--he did not mention the genes that may produce a docile fox were linked to those cute lil physical puppy traits we so love). Overall, I think I was (perhaps unrealistically) expecting studies more about definitive personalities in animals and less about how long it takes a spider to decide it will come out of it's hidey hole after a perceived threat. I wanted to know more about cats, dammit! And coyotes!!

That all being said, I did quite enjoy the last several chapters, which included sections on nature/nurture, the gene associated with smallpox survival (??!!!), interspecies relationships, and BEES (!!!! I want to know more about bees!!!!). I also admittedly liked the quirky descriptions of Shivik's cats and dogs.

Anyway. That's basically all I have to say. Between this book and Cat Sense, I'm still looking for the book that will explain why my cat is the cutest cuddliest little jerk I've ever met.

[Don Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book whose main theme is that all organism's behavior is individualistic and that it is wrong and illogical to think of these entities in a single minded way. A good read that stretches the mind.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A survey of research into animal personalities across a range of species (from water skimmers to wolves). Somewhat aligned to the Myers-Briggs personality-type test (one equine therapist even has even identified her horses according to their MB type), most of the research focuses on determining an individual's boldness, sociability, and aggressiveness relative to other members of its species. While there are fundamental limitations to the experiments that Shivik addresses in broad terms, many of the designs are clever, innovative and lead to interesting results. The anecdotal evidence he presents is even more limited, of course, but it also tends to be more entertaining.

It might comfort certain readers to know that no animal is perfectly adapted to its environment at any particular time- that some personality traits work better in some situations than others. It's kind of like the animal kingdom version of Mario Cuomo's political career. Male Western bluebirds can be maladaptively aggressive and not get to mate with any females because they're too busy fighting other males for territory. On the other hand, males that aren't aggressive enough won't have suitable territories to woo mates. In lean times, bolder animals will likely have better diets than their shyer counterparts and a better chance of not starving to death. In all times, they have a higher chance of being predated.

I found it somewhat reassuring to know that the conflict between the needs of the individual and the group isn't a uniquely human one- and that while groups will usually muddle through over the long term, individuals often blunder.

[Abdul Alhazred · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are reading this you probably don't need much convincing that the extreme behaviorist view on animal is flawed, which is a point made repeatedly here. Some of the evidence presented is conservative and scientific, like testing animal temperaments and the biological outcomes, trying to find genes that govern "personality" (which is basically just temperament here), and spoiler; it's complicated and varies due to gene expression. Unfortunately the good bits are mixed in with a lot of bad ones. A holistic horse therapist who talks about chakras? This is a book about science according to your own tagline. It also leans heavily into Myers–Briggs for making comparisons to human personality, a test that doesn't have scientific rigor (like much of the entire field of personality psychology, it exists to sell corporate training courses and self-help books). The author has a doctorate so these are self-goals he should know better than inflicting. I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint, but proving something about animal cognition and personality is hard. You set the bar writing a book about the science of it - why fill it with a ton of anecdotes, kooks and crap?

Read Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? instead.

[Evelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that had great potential, but ended up being a terrible disappointment. The author started the book by discussing the need to set aside the concept of anthropomorphism, and learn about animal personalities and understand them in order to better comprehend animal behavior. However, once he made his opening remarks the author apparently couldn’t decide whether he was writing a textbook, or a book for the general reader. So he compiled numerous synopses of scientific papers in anecdotal form ostensibly to illustrate his key points in a helter skelter manner. The stories didn’t flow readily from one to another, nor were they linked by the author’s commentary.

Finally he veered totally away from the original subject matter to draw analogies between animal and human personalities, and discuss the bonds between humans and animals.

The book, although it provided some interesting information, was a missed opportunity to teach people more about animal personality characteristics, and its impact on their behavior and their needs from a conservation and environmental perspective.

It rates 2.5 stars.

[Avion Koenig · Rating 5 out of 5]

If the science behind animal personality is of interest to you I highly recommend checking this book out. John Shivik is a wildlife biologist who has made it his mission to create more awareness behind why animals behave the way they do. Not only that, but he explains in the simplest of terms for the average person why studying personality is still such a relatively new science, and how valuable this new knowledge is towards understanding the intricacies of animal society all the way down to the individuals that make them up. There's explanations of various experiments done with many different species from dolphins to spiders, with importance on paying attention to how diversity within populations is vital to the survival of a species. It gives you a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the natural world. I can't emphasize enough about just how important this book is for understanding an aspect of animal biology that's often ignored, even by scientists.

[Sue Jackson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I love the idea of a book that scientifically shows that animals have personalities, I didn't find it here. Some of the stories shared by John Shivik were interesting and some did show that animals have distinct personalities similar to people. Still, most of what was in this book was what any pet owner would already know. I will admit I had never thought about spider or salamander personalities but am still not impressed. There needed to be more science. Maybe that was the problem; the author tried to combine science, humor, and animal traits in one book and therefore fell short.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author spends most of 200 pages citing study after study after study proving that animals big and small have personalities. Anyone who's ever had a pet knows that about some animals, but did you know that lizards and spiders also have different personalities? Some are brave, some timid; some aggressive, some timid--within the same species. He proves that nature and nurture intertwine, and that variations in personality allow a species to survive. He brings it home with a gentle nudge in the direction of diversity within communities. For the science-minded, it's a great read. For others, it gets repetitious.

[Kristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

More meat...less fluff. At first reading glance this book might seem like it reads overly academic, but it really came across in the end as quite the opposite. While I agree whole heartedly with the basic premise of Shivik's argument (duh, of course animals have unique personalities), I don't think he did a particularly good job of proving his point. I wanted more science and less personal tidbits. The whole thing ended as choppy and aimless. At times entertaining and informative, but more often tedious.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was really enjoyable as an educational pursuit. It's written by a scientist who is obviously an animal lover, and he's collected studies that a number of biologists have done on animal personality/individuality. Lucky for the reader, he translates the white papers into layman's terms. I found it fascinating to read about birds, wolves, cougars, crabs and even spiders, with unique personality traits. It isn't proof that my cat has a sense of humor, but it was really interesting.

[Kristin Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so interesting, I wanted to grab my friend and read to her from just about every chapter. Reading about how you can objectively quantify and study animal personalities really opens up your mind. Did you know that, like humans, animals respond to trauma by changing their personalities, but others are more resilient?

Towards the end I thought there might be too many studies on boldness and not enough on other animal personality traits, but it was still mindblowing altogether.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never kill anything if I can help it, so my catch and release methods made me notice how mice and even spiders are very different individuals. Some give up, others fight, others are relaxed. This book validated my belief that non-human animals have personalities, just like the hairless ape. Many studies here were familiar to me but a lot of content was new. Animal lovers and anyone who's ever had the pleasure of loving fur babies will really enjoy this purrrfect read.

[Beatrice Gormley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept explained in this book--that within every species, from spiders to elephants, there is a range of personality types--is most intriguing, and the author backs it up with many examples of specific research. Too many examples, in fact, for this reader; it got tedious and repetitive, and finally I didn't finish it.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was a relatively easy read with some interesting discussions about animal research . Not sure what the main point was or why the chapters were organized the way they were. I think this author struggled to find the right audience and the right animal subjects to weave together a compelling tapestry of research findings.

[Michael Kott · Rating 3 out of 5]

IT was interesting as he related his dealings wth PINGUINO (CAT) and Gretchen (dog); then he went to impress with Scientific gobbley Gook. NOt impressed in the slightest. Got through 40 pages anyway!

[Susanne Scheppmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book. Might be a bit academic for some, but so very interesting.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting books and good update on animal psychology and state of the science. Nothing revelatory.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact that stood out the most in this densely packed scientific book was that scientists have been able to modify behavior problems in mice with gene therapy. Albeit the sample was minuscule, but, what a thought.

[Barb H]

I was unable to complete this book by the library due-date. I plan to resume reading.

[Gail]

I read a little of this--it was interesting, yet also kind of dry. I might pick it up again in the future and read more of it. Maybe.