Imprinting is the learning process through which the social preferences of animals of certain species become restricted to a particular object or class of objects. A distinction is made between filial and sexual imprinting. Filial imprinting is involved in the formation, in young animals, of an attachment to, and a preference for, the parent, parent surrogate, or siblings. Sexual imprinting is involved in the formation of mating preferences that are expressed in later life. The phenomenon of filial imprinting was described as early as 1518 by Sir Thomas More in his Utopia. However, imprinting was investigated experimentally much later, by D. A. Spalding in 1873 and by Oscar Heinroth in 1911. Konrad Lorenz, who gave the phenomenon its name, subsequently provided a detailed description of imprinting in a number of bird species in an influential work published in 1935.

Filial Imprinting

Although filial imprinting may occur in mammals (Sluckin, 1972), it has been...