do animals have a personality?

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or do they have an animality?

Then, what about animal-like people [like me, I'm a little kitty]? Do they have personality or an animality?

For sure, my cat has such an interesting character.

My cat has a definite PURR-sonality!

My tiny Miniature Pinscher Benji has some unique personality traits.

He howls when the phone rings and no one answers within a few rings - he knows there's someone at the other end and as he stays at my mom's complex where there's a security gate at the entrance he knows that if someone picks up the phone and is just a few seconds, there's a visitor coming!

He thinks he's a Rottweiler and is fearless of dogs 280 times his size. In fact the bigger the are the more he growls at them...

He doesn't like birds or other creatures on his territory.

Mentioning the word rat always sends him into a fit of barking at once...

He did once have to share a home with some cats (as well as other dogs) when my partner and I were house sitting and seemed to adjust well. Not sure about nowadays though...

Both of my Siamese befriended all of my family dogs. My first Siamese, Samantha, hated other cats, but loved dogs. My second, Prince, was friends with everyone, but was especially fond of our dog. Both were Lynx/tabby points.

This is funny. The word personality has as root meaning an actors mask. This is a hint that there is something fake and artificial going on, and not indicative as having spiritual implication.

I think that elaborated distinction among human beings arises through dualistic thinking and categorizing. So yes, depending on how you want to look, you can find probably more refinement in characters among humans, than among an other animal group. But this is only at a superficial, conceptual level, and not in reality. You can see humans as easily as being all just the same. Viewed in the second way, humans wouldn't have unique/individual souls or spirits. Notice that humans not only use this to create distinction between humans and animals, but also between human groups internally as well...

Are all beings the same, or all different? I do hope that all beings have a unique spirit/soul and are not at the deepest level all the same as for example Hinduism beliefs. I don't like about 85% of the human beings (NB nothing to do with race, religeon, class, or nationality etc.), and the very thought of being the same as them makes me sick.

In short, animals have distict characters (unique spirits, souls, personalities) from one to another, but not as easy to see as in humans.

I hope this is a clear answer to your question.

My dog has a little personality of his own. He begs for treats and he winks at everyone.

Sometimes I forget that our cat is just a cat. She seems a lot more like a person who is just shaped like a cat X)

Scientists who spend their lives with an eye glued to a microscope say that even one celled microbes have noticeable individual "personalities" if you observe them long enough.

I am sure that every pet owner can testify that nonhuman vertebrate animals have personalities.

The question raised by the OP is what do you call the "personality" of a non human?

Its a semantic question.

Saw some flaky lady on some cable show talking about your cat's individual "catsonality". It was a grating word to have to listen to.

I would just say "your cat, or dog's, personality". But if you have to follow that lady's "logic" it would NOT even be "catsonality", it would be "catality" (the equivalent of person +ality, would be cat + ality. Not cat +sonality).

Definitely, plain as day sometimes. I have two cats, who are siblings. The boy is very intelligent but also has the most jealous, possessive personality I've ever seen in a cat. If I'm playing with him and his sister so much as enters the same room, he will literally walk into the darkest corner and turn his back to us, he refuses to share me with her, lol. His sister on the other hand is incredibly sweet, but overprotective of the house. She growls at postmen just like a dog would.

I would just call it personality. Animality, dogality, turtleality, it just sounds strange and makes you have to pick a word for every species, so I just use the already existing word, which is also the one that has been used in articles about animals' personalities. No reason to make it more complex than it needs to be.

Those sound like names out of the Balkans! ("Shopic," "Cilic," "Djokovic," "Tipsarevic")