Konrad Lorenz, author of very influential books on animal behaviour and winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, is considered one of the fathers of modern ethology, the science that analyses animal behaviour using techniques from biology and psychology.

In this article we will talk about the biography of Konrad Lorenz and his most significant theoretical contributions , especially the concept of the imprint and other key developments in the field of ethology. For this last aspect we will briefly review the foundation of the discipline, in which Niko Tinbergen also played a fundamental role.

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 he was a child he had a large number of pets, some of them very rare.

However, Lorenz’s university career began with medicine; in 1928 he obtained a doctorate in this discipline, and it was not until 1933 that he completed his studies in zoology, also earning a doctorate in his true vocation. During this time Lorenz studied the behaviour and physiology of various animals and gave influential talks on this subject.

Lorenz lived in Germany during the Nazi era. At that time he sympathized with Hitler’s eugenic ideas and collaborated with the regime as a psychologist, although he later tried to deny his affiliation with this movement and showed his rejection of genocide. He participated in the war as a doctor and was a prisoner of the Soviet Union between 1944 and 1948.

After his release 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 Behavioural Physiology. In his last years he focused on the application of his ideas to human behavior. He died in 1989 in his hometown.

The foundation of ethology

In 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 behaviour, especially in natural contexts.

Although the contributions of authors such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck or Charles Darwin are clear antecedents to modern ethology, this science did not begin to develop and become popular 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 primarily subordinated to biology, although it also maintains a very relevant relationship with psychology. In this sense, ethology focuses on the behavior of non-human animals, while comparative psychology is more interested in the similarities and differences between this and our species.

A fundamental concept of ethology is that of fixed patterns of behaviour , proposed by Konrad Lorenz and his teacher Oskar Heinroth. These are instinctive, pre-programmed 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 cubs, Lorenz detected an extremely striking behavior: when they hatched, the animals followed the first moving object they saw, regardless of whether it was their mother or not. Lorenz called this pattern of biologically prepared behaviour “imprint” .

But the influence of the imprint did not end after birth. Lorenz noticed that the young 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 rather than 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 a basis for his hypothesis about fixed patterns of behavior, which have a broader character, and as a cornerstone of his contributions to ethology in general.

Lorenz’s contributions on imprinting and other similar phenomena were opposed to 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.

Implications for Psychology

Konrad Lorenz’s work has served to establish a relationship between zoology and behavioural sciences. The study of the imprint, in turn, helps to understand that genetics is not usually expressed in a unilateral way , but that it needs the presence of an environment “foreseen” by evolution but that does not always occur.