Highlights•Researchers use neophobia tests for many purposes, but produce conflicting
results.•Attention to cognitive mechanisms and ecological context reveals testing issues.•We …

In this paper we show how animal personality could explain some of the large inter‐
individual variation in resting metabolic rate (MR) and explore methodological and …

Human‐altered environmental conditions affect many species at the global scale. An
extreme form of anthropogenic alteration is the existence and rapid increase of urban areas …

Highlights•Spatial examination and number of pecks reliably predicted exploration in
OFT.•Individual exploration performances were correlated in line with fast-slow …

Curiosity is a core driver for life‐long learning, problem‐solving and decision‐making. In a
broad sense, curiosity is defined as the intrinsically motivated acquisition of novel …

An increasing number of studies are focusing on the role of animal temperament in the
ecology of wild populations. One important step in these studies is to estimate the …

Interest in the evolutionary origin and maintenance of individual behavioural variation and
behavioural plasticity has increased in recent years. 2. Consistent individual behavioural …

Animal innovations have far-reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences. The
occurrence and persistence of an innovation require several processes, including …

A fundamental question of current ecological research concerns the drives and limits of
species responses to human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC). Behavioural …

Highlights•Corvids demonstrate higher object neophobia than other species.•Corvids and
other species are less fearful of litter in urban than rural areas.•Urban and rural populations …