摘要
The literature on animal personalities is varied and sometimes fragmented, with different terms for the in-dividual differences that have been found. Everyone agrees that these differences are important （Groothuis and Carere, 2005） but not everyone agrees how to de- fine them. Defining differences by a multidimensional assessment of these variations, similar to that used for human personality assessment （Gosling, 2001）, taps into the complexity of these variations, see Mather and Anderson （1993） for octopuses. A different approach has been to decide on a dimension of behavior and to look at its correlation and trade-offs across different situations （Sih et al., 2004）. Gherardi et al＇s （this collec- tion） review suggests that behavioral syndromes are larger, as they demand multiple contexts. But a thorough student of personality will evaluate behavior across time and contexts, find several personality dimensions, and only then use the most important one for each animal. Pinter-Wollman （this collection） focuses on activity and Pruitt and Reichert （this collection） on aggression. But another difference is that personality is assumed to be a fundamental part of the nature of the animal, whereas a behavioral syndrome is just similar locations on a di-mension occurring in several contexts.
