Konrad Lorenz was undoubtedly one of the most important scientists and researchers of the 20th century. He studied animal behavior like no other scientist. He is known as the “father of ethology”, which is precisely the discipline that studies animal behavior. enriched what we knew about the laws of adaptation and survival.
This remarkable scientist was born in Vienna in 1903, from a very young age he showed a special love for animals, had many pets and devoted much of his time to caring for them with care, curiously he felt a great attraction to nature The geese and of that fascination were born his first discoveries, so he always wanted to study zoology, but his father hoped that he would be a doctor and Konrad did not want to contradecipher him.
- Konrad Lorenz ended up studying medicine at Columbia University in New York.
- However.
- As soon as he graduated.
- He continued his research in zoology.
- Which led him to complete his doctoral studies in this discipline.
- At the University of Vienna.
“The bond with a dog is the most durable in this country. “Konrad Lorenz?
Konrad Lorenz was a great observer. He spent much of his time observing wild geese and other birds. In 1936, he met Niko Tinbergen, a biologist and ornithologist. They both shared the same fascination with animals and began working together. The two laid the foundation for what later became ethology, a science that studies animal behavior.
Ethology is a purely biological science, but it has a very close relationship with psychology because it also studies the fundamentals of behavior, which is found in animals contrasts with human behavior and vice versa.
One of the most relevant aspects of Konrad Lorenz’s studies was that he devised, with the help of his teacher, Oskar Heinroth, the concept of “fixed patterns of conduct”. As the name suggests, it is a series of unchanging patterns of behavior, which have been found in most animal species.
He found that some of the answers are instinctive, marked by genetic programming; certain stimuli trigger these behaviors, many of which include real rituals, such as bird mating rituals.
Printing is another of the most important concepts developed by Konrad Lorenz, it is a kind of brand or print that adheres to certain animals from birth. Lorenz discovered it by watching baby geese and newborn ducks.
He noticed that the chicks came out of the egg and followed the first moving object they saw, no matter whether that object is your mother or not, they simply acted automatically, chasing everything that moved in front of them. has been called impression.
Konrad Lorenz also pointed out that this impression was not limited to the first minutes of life, but was maintained over time, a phenomenon that has led these animals to try to mate with humans when they have reached maturity and even rejected members of their own species. , giving priority to humans, which does not happen in all animal species, but in some.
Konrad Lorenz’s studies have had a major impact on psychology, one of the most important being to have shown that instinct plays a very important role in all animals, including humans, which contradicts some behavioral thesis, in which it was postulated that all human behavior was learned. .
Similarly, the concept of Huella? It has allowed us to define new perspectives on the impact of circumstances on behaviour, it has clearly shown that under certain conditions, even instinct is able to lead us on unexpected paths.
Konrad Lorenz’s research has provided valuable evidence to understand the laws of adaptation and survival in the animal kingdom, which can be extrapolated to humans. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973 and became responsible for the creation of a new discipline: ethology. The brand is alive in today’s knowledge and its name already has an undisputed place among the greatest in history.