Animal Studies into Attachment

Animal Studies into Attachment

Lorenz's research -imprinting

Procedure: He randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs. Hald were hatched in a natural environment with their mother, the other half in an incubator where the first object they would see is Lorenz.

Results: The incubator group followed him, the control group followed their mother, when the two groups were mixed, the patterns remained constant. This is known as imprinting, bird species will attach to and follow the first moving object they see, they do this during a critical period and if imprinting does not occur in this time, the geese will never attach itself to a mother figure.

Sexual Imprinting

It has been observed that birds who attach to a human later display courtship behaviour towards humans. A peacock raised in a reptile house tried to court with giant tortoises as it was the first moving object that it saw.

Evaluation

• Generalisability…