Owens et al. (2024) add to the growing voices stressing the importance of considering individual differences in animal welfare and conservation. I advocate for an additional emphasis on the importance of between species comparisons of the degree of individual variation in cognition and emotion within species. A better understanding of the factors predicting within-species variability will help conservationists target their efforts. Additionally, I caution against invoking circularity in using "behavioural traits" to predict related behaviours.
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Jennifer Vonk (2024) studied this question.
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