L10 - Lorenz (1935)

Question 1

What did Lorenz want to investigate?

Answer 1

• Konrad Lorenz = ethologist (study animal behaviour in natural environment)
• wanted to study imprinting - instinct in several animal species to attach to first moving thing they see after birth

Question 2

What was Lorenz’s procedure?

Answer 2

• took clutch of gosling (goose) eggs + divided into 2 groups
• one group hatched with mother present
• other eggs places in incubator - when they hatched, first moving thing they saw was Lorenz
• Lorenz marked the two goups to distinguish between them and then placed them all together again

Question 3

What were the findings of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 3

• goslings quickly divided themselves up - one group following mother and other group following Lorenz - goslings from incubator showed no recognition of natural mother
• Lorenz found that this process restricted to critical period of animal’s life - if young animal not exposed to moving object during early critical period then animal would not imprint
• animals imprint on consistently moving objects in their first two days
• imprinting similar to attachment in that itbinds an animal to a caregiver in a special relationship
• Lorenz had to teach the goslings how to swim and they would always return to him when he called

Question 4

what were the long-term effects of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 4

• found that process is irreversible + long lasting - one of the geese that imprinted on him called Martina used to sleep on his bed every night
• also discovered that this early imprinting has an effect on later mate preferences - sexual imprinting
• Animals ( especially birds) will choose to mate witht the sme kind of object upon which they were imprinted

Question 5

What is a strength of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 5

+ other studies support idea that animals are born with an instinct to attach to the first moving object they see. Gutton demonstrated that chickens exposed to yellow rubber gloves during feeding in their first few weeks of life imprinted on the gloves

Question 6

What is a weakness of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 6

• imprinting more reversible than Lorenz thought . Gutton found that he could reverse the imprinting in chickens that had initially tried to mate with the yellow rubber gloves. After spending time with their own species they were able to engage in normal sexual behaviour with other chickens