Konrad Lorenz

1 How did you come across your theory?

When I was a little boy I loved animals and had many; fish, dogs, ducks, geese and even a

monkey. One day when I was ten years old a neighbor gave me a recently hatched ducling

and within an hour it started following me around like it would it’s mother. I didn’t think

much of it then though.

2 What did you think of this phenomenom after completing medical school?

After medical school I looked back on the incident and wandered if there was a biological or

innate reason that these ducks followed me instead of another duck. What I discovered after

hatching ducks and geese and having them follow me was imprinting.

3 What exactly is imprinting?

Imprinting is the primary formation of social bonds in infant animals.

4 Why was this such an odd discovery?

The newly hatched goslings and ducklings followed and became socially bonded to the first

moving object they encountered. Even at maturity, these animals tried to court and even

attempted to mate with humans if they were imprinted to them! I was impressed by the fact

that a young bird does not instinctively recognize adult members of it's own species but

require this special type of learning.

5 What other discoveries did this open the door for?

From my initial analysis of imprinting, I went on to identify the essential components of

innate behavior and developed the central constructs of releasers and fixed action patterns

which serve as the foundation of the study of animal behavior.