RESUMEN
Boldness - defined as the propensity of individuals to take risks - is a key research area within animal behavioural studies, significantly affecting adaptive strategies, habitat selection, foraging behaviour, reproduction, dispersal, and other crucial survival behaviours. Despite the extensive study of personality traits like extraversion and curiosity across various animal species, data on wolves (Canis lupus), particularly on the subspecies level, remains sparse. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining boldness and its associated personality traits in different wolf subspecies (Canis lupus lupus, Canis lupus arctos, Canis lupus lycaon) (n = 23), and wolf-dog hybrids (n = 10), utilising novel object interaction tests and validated questionnaires previously applied to wild canids. Our results show significant differences in boldness as well as in related personality traits between taxa, both between pure wolves and wolf hybrids, with significantly higher boldness of North American subspecies. The inter-subspecies differences were more significant than the differences between groups or at the individual level, suggesting that subspecies ecology and historical selection pressure in subspecies history might have caused long-lasting adaptations in Canis lupus ssp.
RESUMEN
Prosociality occurs in many species and is likely to be a crucial factor for the survival of group-living animals. Social feedback is an important mechanism for the coordination of group decisions. Since group-living animals with specific personality axes, i.e., boldness, are known to provide certain benefits for their group, bold actions might receive more prosocial feedback than other actions. Our case study aims to determine whether bold behaviour, i.e., novel object interaction (Nobj), might be answered more frequently with prosocial behaviours. We investigated the differences in the frequency of occurrence in prosocial behaviours after three different individual actions in two groups of grey wolves. We aim to outline the development of a social reward behavioural category as part of social feedback mechanisms. We used Markov chain models for probability analyses, and a non-parametric ANOVA to test for differences between the influences of individual behaviours on the probability of a prosocial behaviour chain. We additionally tested for the potential influences of age, sex and personality on the frequency of Nobj. Our results suggest that bold interactions are more often responded to with prosocial behaviour. Bold behaviour might be more often socially rewarded because of its benefits for group-living animals. More research is needed to investigate whether bold behaviour is more frequently responded to prosocially, and to investigate the social reward phenomenon.