AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Imprinting. Imprinting is a simple and highly specific type of learning that occurs at a particular age or life stage during the development of certain animals, such as ducks and geese. When ducklings hatch, they imprint on the first adult animal they see, typically their mother.

Detailed explanation-2: -imprinting, in psychobiology, a form of learning in which a very young animal fixes its attention on the first object with which it has visual, auditory, or tactile experience and thereafter follows that object.

Detailed explanation-3: -A young duckling during the first few hours of life sees the image of its mother and siblings. This gets imprinted in the brain of the duckling and follows them which is essential for its survival.

Detailed explanation-4: -An integral characteristic of imprinting is that it occurs at a specific point in someone’s life, usually beginning the moment they are born. This period varies between species, ranging from within a day or so after birth to almost the first few years of their life.

Detailed explanation-5: -Famously described by zoologist Konrad Lorenz in the 1930s, imprinting occurs when an animal forms an attachment to the first thing it sees upon hatching. Lorenz discovered that newly hatched goslings would follow the first moving object they saw-often Lorenz himself.