Animal studies

• What is the definition of imprinting?

  When a young animal recognises another animal/object/person as a parent or object to trust
• What was Lorenz investigation in attachment of geese?

  • Divided 12 goose eggs
  • 6 hatched and saw Lorenz first
  • 6 hatched and saw mother first (control group)
  • Imprinting happened within few hours of hatching
  • Mixed groups up, control group went towards mother and incubator group went towards Lorenz
• What is sexual imprinting?

  Relationship found between imprinting and adult mate preference
• What was Lorenz study into sexual imprinting?

  • Peacock reared in reptile house at zoo
  • Imprinted on giant tortoise and displayed sexual behaviour towards giant tortoises
  • Provides evidence for sexual imprinting
• How can sexual imprinting be used to disprove Lorenz theory of imprinting?

  Guilton et al (chicken imprinted on yellow glove)

  Chickens sexual imprint reversed, reducing reliability of Lorenz' study
• What was Harlow's monkey experiment?

  • Reared 16 baby monkeys with cloth and wire mother

  1:

  • The wire or cloth mother dispenses milk, recorded how long baby monkeys spent with each mother
  • spent 17-18 hours with cloth monkey in both conditions regardless of who fed them
  • if wire mother dispenses milk, baby monkeys only ate before returning to cloth mother

  2:

  • Robot added to scare baby monkey to see which mother theyd seek comfort from
  • Ran to cloth mother to reduce fear before investigating
  • Monkeys observed for effects of maternal deprivation,showed aggression,neglected young less sociable
• What is one strength and two limitations of Harlow's monkey study?

  STRENGTH:

  • Real world applications, allows us to care for animals in zoos

  LIMITATIONS:

  • Less applicable to humans, humans not the same as monkeys
  • Ethical issues, caused distress to baby monkeys