DAY 173: IMPRINTING

An amazing  and very curious example of genetic and environmental influences on animal behavior is provided by imprinting. It is a phenomenon exhibited by several species when young, mainly birds, such as ducklings and chicks. 

Upon coming out of their eggs, they will follow and become attached (socially bonded) to the first moving object they encounter (which usually, but not necessarily, is the mother duck or hen).

The first scientific studies of this phenomenon were carried out by Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz (1903 - 1989), one of the founders of ethology (the study of animal behavior). He discovered that if greylag geese were reared by him from hatching, they would treat him like a parental bird. The goslings followed Lorenz about and when they were adults they courted him in preference to other greylag geese.  He first called the phenomenon "stamping in" in German, which has been translated to English as imprinting. The reason for the name is because Lorenz thought that the sensory object met by the newborn bird is somehow stamped immediately and irreversibly onto its nervous system.