Personalities of octopuses (Octopus rubescens).

Abstract

Large individual differences are commonly found in the behavior of octopuses, even in standardized situations. Octopus rubescens (n = 44) were tested in 3 situations (alerting, threat, and feeding) to quantify this variation. A factor analysis of resulting behaviors isolated 3 orthogonal dimensions of their variability, Activity, Reactivity, and Avoidance, which accounted for 45% of the variance. The similarity of these factors to dimensions of personality in humans and individual differences in animals suggests there may be commonalities in such variation across phyla