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The study of animal personality is largely based on the observation and investigation of behavioural traits. In an ecological context, traits or ‘characters’ are attributes of an organism that are shared by members of a species. Traits can be shared by all or only a portion of individuals in a population.
Culture, which was once thought of as a uniquely human trait, is now firmly established as a common trait among animals and is not merely a set of related behaviors passed on by genetic transmission as some have argued. Genetic transmission, like cultural transmission, is a means of passing behavioral traits from one individual to another.
Inherited traits are controlled by genes and the complete set of genes within an organism's genome is called its genotype. [2] The complete set of observable traits of the structure and behavior of an organism is called its phenotype. These traits arise from the interaction of the organism's genotype with the environment. [3]
Domestication has been defined as "a sustained multi-generational, mutualistic relationship in which one organism assumes a significant degree of influence over the reproduction and care of another organism in order to secure a more predictable supply of a resource of interest, and through which the partner organism gains advantage over individuals that remain outside this relationship ...
The adaptive traits may be structural, behavioural or physiological. Structural adaptations are physical features of an organism, such as shape, body covering, armament, and internal organization. Behavioural adaptations are inherited systems of behaviour, whether inherited in detail as instincts, or as a neuropsychological capacity for learning.
These features normally disappear in later development, but it may not happen if the animal has an atavism. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In biology , an atavism is a modification of a biological structure whereby an ancestral genetic trait reappears after having been lost through evolutionary change in previous generations. [ 3 ]
The word pedigree is a corruption of the Anglo-Norman French pé de grue or "crane's foot", either because the typical lines and split lines (each split leading to different offspring of the one parent line) resemble the thin leg and foot of a crane [3] or because such a mark was used to denote succession in pedigree charts.
For example, several studies have shown that performance is better on, for example, a color discrimination (e.g. blue vs green) after the animal has learned another color discrimination (e.g. red vs orange) than it is after training on a different dimension such as an X shape versus an O shape. The reverse effect happens after training on forms.