Measuring Zoo Rhino Personality: Investigating Methods of Assessment and Relationships to Behavior

Animal personality impacts how animals experience and perceive their surroundings. Understanding how to reliably assess and incorporate animal personality is important for species management. This study aimed to investigate three personality assessment methods in zoo-housed white rhinoceros (response to a novel object, response to a novel sound, and trait ratings by knowledgeable informants), compare the personality profiles generated by these methods and then investigate their relationship to activity budgets to determine instrument validity. This study was undertaken on 12 unrelated Southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum) (6 male, 6 female) from 4 collections in the United Kingdom (2 zoos and 2 safari parks). Activity budgets were calculated from a total 80 h of behavioral observations (mean ± SD 20 h ± 1 h per collection). Nine of the 12 rhinos interacted with the novel object, whilst only 4 rhinos exhibited a behavioral response (e.g., startle) to the familiar and 5 to the unfamiliar playbacks, respectively. Fourteen keepers across all collections reliably rated 9 of 21 personality adjectives. There were a number of significant correlations between trait ratings and rhino behavior (p < 0.05), although the correlations did not always make clear biological sense. There were no significant correlations between response to novel objects or novel sounds and rhino behavior (p > 0.05). These results suggest the personality tools are capturing different aspects of rhino personality and thus cannot be used interchangeably. Understanding the relationship between rhino personality as assessed using each instrument and observed behavior is important in reliably and efficiently assessing behavior profiles for routine integration into rhino management.