ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2012) — One individual is wild and audacious, the other one shy and cautious. It is widely unknown why there are major differences in personality even within a species. Melanie Dammhahn, a scientist at the German Primate Center in Göttingen, has now shown in her recently published study, that male mouse lemurs are shy when young and grow more audacious as they age. Females remain about the same throughout their lifecycle.
Adult males are willing to take high risks, which they might pay for with their life, in order to gain reproductive advantages. Because young males are rather unsuccessful in mating, they tend not take the same risks, which keeps them alive for when they have better odds for successful mating. Mature males, in their prime, indeed do father more young and some individuals father more young than others. It is therefore worth taking chances with some daring adventures to improve their reproductive success. Females, on the other hand, keep their personality traits throughout their entire life which makes sense, because every year they have about the same chance of having offspring.
Read on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120308100250.htm
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