Animals often imprint on who first they see, Lorenz ensured that he was the first thing that they saw for them to imprint on him, rather than the mother figure.
Aims
Info
To find the aims of the study.
Procedure
- Lorenz randomly divided a 12 goose eggs.
- Half of the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment, the other half were hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
Findings
- The geese followed Lorenz everywhere
- The control group who hatched in the presence of their mother, followed her
- When two groups were mixed up, the control group continued to follow the mother and the experimental group followed Lorenz
Critical Period
Lorenz identified a very definite period for imprinting, labelled the critical period.
If a young animal is not exposed to a moving object during this early critical period, the animal will not imprint.
Long-Lasting Effects
Lorenz noted that the imprinting was both irreversible and long-lasting, and that the effect early imprint has on later mating preference is immense.
Sexual Imprinting
Animals, especially birds, choose to mate with the same king of object which were imprinted. This is labelled sexual imprinting.
A case study found that the first moving objects a peacock saw after hatching was giant tortoises, which left it as an adult being only interested in giant tortoises.