IMPRINTING

Imprinting is a special type of learning to display, present in various forms and degrees in all vertebrates. It serves to establish a stable memory of the visual characteristics of the individuals from which you will be bred (filial imprinting) or individuals with whom you can reproduce (sexual imprinting). For convenience in research, the imprinting has been studied mostly in birds and to a lesser extent, in primates. The imprinting is not an innate behavior but you can not learn it during life. He has normal characteristics, as it remains tied to information is that the newborn receives from the outside world is the genetic capacity, with a sort of "window" during which his nervous system is sensitive to store the image of the parent or is recognized as such. Newborn animals have a representation in different levels in brain that allows them to recognize individuals of their species. The imprinting is used to complete this representation. Representation is more detailed, less need there will be imprinted. The tiny newborn without fear approaches to different objects, including his mother, but within a certain period of time, its internal representation of the innate drive to learn the physical characteristics of the mother so that, over the imprinting, the chick will tracking the behavior only to the mother and show signs of fear when approached by a foreign object. This process, which in nature is very effective, can be modified to the extent that one chick, who from birth receives the opportunity to observe just a man (or another animal or even an object that has certain characteristics) will recognize the man as their mother and refuse to bring other individuals of the species.

KONRAD LORENZ This phenomenon has been studied and documented for the first time by the student of ethology and the Nobel Prize for medicine Konrad Lorenz. Lorenz, after the first observations on the birds of farmed or wild, is proposed as a foster mother for many chicks of ducks and realized that these are emotional attachment to him as if he were their mother. The most famous goose, described by Lorenz was Martina.