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Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early) bond instinctively with the first moving object that they see within the first hours of hatching. Although ...
Lorenz also found that the geese could imprint on inanimate objects. In one notable experiment, they followed a box placed on a model train in circles around the track. [2] Filial imprinting is not restricted to non-human animals that are able to follow their parents, however. The filial imprinting of birds was a primary technique used to ...
The first English-language edition was published in 1952. The English title refers to the legendary Seal of Solomon, a ring that supposedly gave King Solomon the power to speak to animals. Lorenz claimed to have achieved this feat of communication with several species, by raising them in and around his home and observing their behavior.
A greylag goose which participates in the described egg-retrieval behavior. Another example of a behavior that has been described as a fixed action pattern is the egg-retrieval behavior of the greylag goose, reported in classic studies by Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. [5]
Goose feathers were used as quill pens, the best being the primary feathers of the left-wing, whose "curvature bent away from the eyes of right-handed writers". [31] The feathers also served to fletch arrows. [30] In ethology, the greylag goose was the subject of Konrad Lorenz's pioneering studies of imprinting behaviour. [32]
Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for their work of developing ethology. [6] Ethology is now a well-recognized scientific discipline, with its own journals such as Animal Behaviour, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Animal Cognition, Behaviour, Behavioral Ecology and Ethology.
Lorenz postulated that for each instinctive act there is a specific energy which builds up in a reservoir in the brain. In this model, Lorenz envisioned a reservoir with a spring valve at its base that an appropriate stimulus could act on, much like a weight on a scale pan pulling against a spring and releasing the reservoir of energy, an ...
Many forms of developmental learning have a critical period, for instance, for imprinting among geese and language acquisition among humans. In such cases, genes determine the timing of the environmental impact. A related concept is labeled "biased learning" (Alcock 2001:101–103) and "prepared learning" (Wilson, 1998:86–87).