Female seals don’t change their spots, according to a new study by University of Alberta biologists. In fact, individual differences in boldness remain consistent over time. The study is among the first to examine boldness in wild marine mammals in the field of animal personality. Animal personality influences many ecological processes, like how individuals interact with other species or respond to changing environmental conditions.

Researchers studied female seals on Sable Island, home to the world’s largest grey seal colony. Over a period from 2008 to 2016, biologist Christi Bubac and a field team led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada measured boldness responses in the female seals when defending their young.

“During the breeding season, we saw that females tend to behave consistently, not only between years, but also within the lactation period of a given year,” explained Bubac, lead author and PhD student in the Department of Biological Sciences studying with wildlife geneticist David Colman. “This provides an example of animal personality, with consistent individual differences observed over time.”

Bubac also examined how reproductive success is related to a seal’s boldness or shyness. Rey seals nurse for 16 to 18 days, so mother seals have a very short window to get baby seals as fat as they can. During this time, baby seals triple in body mass. Body mass is a good predictor of reproductive success because it indicates the puppies’ chances of survival. “On average, we found that bolder females stop feeding those that are two kilograms heavier, compared with the shyest females, improving their chances of surviving the first year of life,” said Bubac.

These results present some very interesting biological questions, explained Coltman, professor of biology. “This research shows that young grey seal moms that are bold tend to stop feeding larger puppies compared with shy moms. However, older grey seals also tend to be bolder. If bolder animals have bigger pups and live longer, why does variation in boldness remain? Why be shy?”

Things Money Can’t Buy?

Every individual wants financial security.【小题1】Because of money,people can live a luxurious life. However, never forget that money will bring power fame and satisfaction but right attitude and behavior of yours will bring respect, dignity and peace to you which you can never buy with your money.There are certain things which money can never give you:

Money can never buy respect

Many people feel they should be respected just because they are rich. Actually, if you feel that just because of money you have a license to disrespect anyone, then this attitude of yours will for sure not keep you at the top for a long time, hence respect others and stay humble and polite with others. 【小题2】

True friends and love

Money will never bring genuine people towards you, because genuine people never make friends by looking at your pocket size. Hence when you get a lot of money, 【小题3】Because they are the ones who will always stay beside you whether you have money or not.

Money can’t give you an extra hour

【小题4】You have to manage everything in those twenty-four hours, who will not be rewarded by any extra hours. 25 hours a day can never happen to you just because of being rich.

Money can’t buy life

You can never buy good health and life.【小题5】You will face health issues without having proper diet and exercise.If you run behind money and ignore your health, your health will take away all your hard-earned money. Hence always understand this phrase HEALTH IS WEALTH.

Dogs are born to socialise with people because we raise them that way. Two-month-old dogs can already recognise when people are pointing at objects and will stare at our faces when they’re spoken to—both signs that dogs have an innate capacity to interact with us through body language.

“Although individual relationships with people might influence that behaviour, at least 40percent of this ability comes from genetics alone, “says Emily Bray at the University of Arizona. “Over the course of keeping dogs, there has been a clear selection for these social skills,” she says. “It’s something that’s deep in them and that comes out at a really young age even before they have much experience with humans.”

Bray and her colleagues tested these types of skills in 375 eight-week-old dogs that were chosen to become service dogs. Bray says, “It was the earliest age when the dogs could carryout such experiments because they were only just old enough to be motivated by food rewards.”

The researchers found that pointing at food hidden under a cup helped the dogs to find it nearly 70 percent of the time. The success rate was high from the start, meaning they weren’t learning to follow pointing, but had already known to do so. In a control test, the randomly selected dogs couldn’t find food hidden under one of the two cups at a higher rate, indicating that they weren’t simply smelling it. Much of the variation in different dogs’ abilities to follow finger-pointing is explained by genetics. Using statistical analyses based on the dogs’ parents and other relatives, the researchers found that genetic factors were responsible for much of these variations.

The team also ran another experiment in which the researchers spoke “baby talk” to the dogs and found that the dogs fixed their eyes on the person for more than 6 seconds on aver-age, representing an understanding that the researchers were communicating with them.