Animal Studies

• What is an animal study?

  Studies carried out on non-human species, for ethical or practical reasons
• Lorenz's Geese: Procedure


  Randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs, where half hatched naturally with their mother, and half hatched in an incubator where the first thing they saw was Lorenz.
• Lorenz's Geese: Findings

  The goslings would follow Lorenz (or the mother goose) because of imprinting, even when mixed with the other group. He identified a 'critical period' where the first attachment must be made.
• Sexual imprinting


  relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences
• Lorenz's geese: Weakness


  Difficult to generalise birds to humans, as mammals show more attachment to their young.
• Lorenz's geese: Weakness


  Guiton et al observed a chicken imprinting on a rubber glove and try mate with it, but learning to mate with other chickens. Lorenz says imprinting is permenant, but this research proves otherwise.
• Harlow's monkeys: Procedure


  16 baby rhesus monkey's raised with either a wire food-dispensing mother, a cloth food-dispensing mother, or a plain cloth mother.
• Harlow's monkeys: Findings


  The monkeys always preferred the cloth mother over the wire mother, regardless if they got food. Shows that comfort is more important than food.
• Harlow's monkeys: Strength


  The research has had a positive effect on psychologist's understanding of human-infant attachment, by showing that close contact enables attachment and helping analyse attachments between mother and infant.
• Harlow's Monkeys: Weakness


  There are major ethical issues as the monkeys faced lots of suffering, which Harlow was aware of as he named the isolation tanks the 'pits of despair'