Temperament affected by the sire:
http://www.akerrsbengals.com/temperament.htm
A study in cats: an exerpt:
The area of inheritance in feline behavior is very new... but I will go
over the different studies that have possible relevance to the
inheritance in cats.
1. Study of sire. There is a study (still in progress) at Cornell on
the effect of the friendliness of the sire on the kittens. Sires were
selected because you can have several litters of kittens from the same
sire at the same time thus allowing the information to be collected
much more rapidly,. What I find interesting about this study is that
the conclusion that sires have strong impact has come from a fairly
small sampling.
Daniel Estep, p. 23
“The ... paternal effect on the friendliness
of domestic cats toward humans. Cats in two different colonies were
rated on their willingness to approach and make contact with humans.
Examination of breeding records showed that friendly males were more
likely to have offspring that were friendly. What led these researchers
to suspect genetic influences was that the offspring never had contact
with their fathers and there was no relationship between the
mother’s friendliness and offspring friendliness.”
Michael Mendl and Robert Harcourt: pg 49
“Evidence supporting an effect due to genetic
variation comes from the work of Turner et al. (1986). Using observer
ratings of kitten ‘friendliness', Turner and his coworkers
demonstrated that one factor which helped explain the variation in
‘friendliness’ scores was kitten paternity. Kittens of
different fathers differed significantly in their
‘friendliness’ scores. Since the kittens never saw their
fathers it is likely that genetic factors mediate this effect.”
Halliday and Snowdon,
“...demonstrate that offspring from a
particular male are reliably different from those of another particular
male: variability of the trait ‘friendliness towards human’
is at least partly explained in terms of who the fathers were.”