Konrad Lorenz: biography and theory of the father of ethology
Konrad Lorenz, author of very influential books on animal behavior and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, is considered one of the fathers of modern ethology, the science that analyzes the behavior of animals through techniques of biology and of psychology.
In this article we will talk about the biography of Konrad Lorenz and his most significant theoretical contributions , especially the concept of imprinting and other key developments in the field of ethology. For this last aspect we will make a brief review of the foundation of the discipline, in which Niko Tinbergen also had a fundamental role.
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Biography of Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was born in Vienna in 1903, when the city was still the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During his childhood Lorenz already showed a very intense interest in animals that would lead him to devote himself to zoology , with special attention to ornithology. Since childhood he had a large number of pets, some of them very unusual.
However, Lorenz's university career began with medicine; in 1928 he obtained a doctorate in this discipline, and it was not until 1933 when he finished his studies on zoology, also doctorate in his true vocation. During this time Lorenz studied the behavior and physiology of different animals and gave influential talks about it.
Lorenz lived in Germany during Nazism. In this age sympathized with the eugenics ideas of Hitler and he collaborated with the regime as a psychologist, although later he tried to deny his affiliation to this movement and showed his rejection of the genocide. He participated in the war as a doctor and was a prisoner of the Soviet Union between 1944 and 1948.
After being released Lorenz returned to Austria, where he was granted important positions in various institutions related to ethology, physiology and psychology; He also founded the Max Planck Institute for the Physiology of Behavior. In his last years he focused on the application of his ideas to human behavior. He died in 1989 in his hometown.
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The foundation of ethology
In the year 1936 Konrad Lorenz met Niko Tinbergen, who was also an ornithologist as well as a biologist . The studies with geese that they carried out together constituted the starting point of the discipline whose foundation is attributed to these authors: ethology, based on the scientific study of animal behavior, especially in natural contexts.
Although the contributions of authors such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin are clear antecedents of modern ethology, this science did not begin to develop and popularize in the way we know it today until Lorenz and Tinbergen carried out their studies, first in Europe and later also in the United States.
Ethology is subordinated as a priority to biology, although it also maintains a very relevant relationship with psychology. In this sense, ethology focuses on the behavior of non-human animals, whereas comparative psychology is more interested in the similarities and differences between it and our species.
A fundamental concept of ethology is that of fixed patterns of behavior , posed by Konrad Lorenz and his teacher Oskar Heinroth. These are instinctive and preprogrammed responses that occur in response to specific environmental stimuli; This would include, for example, the mating rituals of many types of birds.
The phenomenon of imprinting
While observing the behavior of newborn duck and goose pups, Lorenz detected an extremely striking behavior: when they hatched, the animals followed the first moving object they saw, regardless of whether this was their mother or not. Lorenz called this pattern of biologically prepared behavior "imprinting" .
But the influence of the imprint did not end after the birth. Lorenz noticed that the offspring established a very close social bond with the humans they imprinted, to the point that, once they reached maturity, they tried to mate with members of our species instead of with other birds of their own. The imprint seemed to be irreversible.
The imprint is a phenomenon limited to a small number of species ; it does not occur in all animals, not even in all birds.Nevertheless, this concept served Lorenz as the basis for his hypothesis on fixed patterns of behavior, which have a broader character, and as a cornerstone of his contributions to ethology in general.
Lorenz's contributions to imprinting and other similar phenomena opposed behaviorism, which rejected the role of instincts in behavior, especially that of human beings. Ethology has contributed to the understanding of the biological basis of behavior and the closeness between people and other animals.
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Implications for Psychology
The works of Konrad Lorenz have served to establish a relationship between zoology and behavioral sciences. The study of the imprint, in turn, helps to understand that genetics is not usually expressed unilaterally , but it needs the presence of an environment "foreseen" by evolution but that does not always occur.
