Abstract
CLASSICAL, imprinting of precocial birds has been studied in the laboratory for some 20 years. Suggestions have also been made over a similar period about the imprinting of precocial mammals, but no systematic experiments specifically concerned with imprinting have been reported so far. Although Shipley's study of guinea-pigs1 referred to imprinting, in reality it was concerned with the approaches and following responses of these animals to moving objects. Imprinting involves more than that, namely an attachment to a given figure, and this can be readily assessed in a discrimination test2. The experiment reported here describes imprinting in young guinea-pigs, judged in terms of the animals' preference for familiar, compared with strange, objects.
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References
Shipley, W. U., Anim. Behav., 11, 470 (1963).
Sluckin, W., Imprinting and Early Learning (Methuen, London, 1964).
Baron, A., Kish, G. B., and Antonitis, J. J., J. Genet. Psychol., 100, 355 (1962).
Salzen, E. A., and Meyer, C. C., Nature, 215, 785 (1967).
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SLUCKIN, W. Imprinting in Guinea-pigs. Nature 220, 1148 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1038/2201148a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2201148a0
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