0:00

Welcome to you stuff you should know from

0:03

house stuff Works dot com.

0:10

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:13

Clark. There's Charles Woody, Took Bryant.

0:16

Get your imprinting all over me? Stop?

0:20

Is that? What is that what I'm doing?

0:22

Yeah, you're rubbing your feathers all over me a

0:25

feather duster that I'm tickling you with, bokeing

0:28

me with your beak. I'm not your parents,

0:30

you know that's right? Thank

0:33

God. What a weird intro that was.

0:35

Yeah, that was a scene.

0:37

That's called animal imprinting. I'm

0:40

sure we've talked about this before, but is it a scene

0:43

or end scene? Really? Joe ran

0:45

dazzo to weigh in on this one, but now we don't

0:47

it's and scene. Um

0:50

sure comment. I'm positive we have talked

0:52

about this, and I know we have, but I don't remember

0:54

the outcome. Well, it was me saying it's a scene

0:56

for sure, and you're going, sure, that's why

0:58

we're talking about it again. Okay,

1:01

it's antsen. So animal imprinting,

1:04

it's a thing. It is. It's

1:07

uh in the strictest definition,

1:09

it is only for birds. Yeah,

1:12

and specific type of birds called precocial

1:14

birds. Yeah, they're very precocial exactly.

1:18

That means that they hatch out the egg and

1:20

look around and start waddling, and they're like,

1:22

oh, look, this is water. I think I have this weird

1:24

and they urge to get in there and swim,

1:27

and oh, here's a

1:29

little bit of duck

1:31

food. I think I'll eat some of that because

1:34

I have a drive to do that. But what

1:36

is that wonderful smell? Oh?

1:38

I think this might be the

1:41

duck that gave birth to me or

1:44

laid me as an egg, and now

1:46

I'm going to imprint myself on you. It's either

1:48

that or it's a grown human man. Yeah,

1:50

it can't be anything, especially with ducks,

1:52

but especially specifically.

1:55

Precocial birds have a

1:57

process where they form

1:59

an attachment to a

2:02

parent, and it's been shown over

2:04

time that that parent doesn't necessarily

2:06

have to be a biological parent.

2:09

It can not even be in the same species.

2:11

It doesn't even have to be a living thing. No,

2:13

it can be a toy train, yes,

2:15

it can be, or a pair of gum boot yeah.

2:18

Um. And humans have known for a very long time

2:20

about this process. It just

2:22

wasn't until like the nineteen hundreds that we started

2:24

to get a um a real grip on

2:27

it. But like apparently

2:29

in UH, there's a Roman treatise around

2:34

I guess, like the thirties, in

2:36

the real thirties, I mean like thirty c E. Not

2:39

no, like thirty not the swing in thirties,

2:42

UM, and it's it basically says like, if you

2:44

want to train some wild ducks, go get

2:46

yourself some duck eggs, put them under

2:48

a hen that you have domesticated, and

2:50

that handle raised those ducks is their own and

2:53

they'll be unwild in

2:56

UH. In rural China, back in the

2:58

day, rice farmers would imprint

3:00

new ducks with a stick so

3:02

they could then use that stick to

3:05

guide them out to their rice population

3:07

where they would eat snails right

3:09

the rice population. So they literally

3:12

following this stick around like it's their parents.

3:15

So they would lead them to UH to help

3:17

to work for them basically, And the whole thing

3:19

is is the stick was what they were introduced

3:22

to at a very specific time in

3:24

their life, usually within

3:26

a couple of hours, and they said,

3:29

stick, you're my mom. I'm gonna

3:31

follow you everywhere. When you're not around, we're gonna

3:33

freak out. It's so weird. Yeah, it's

3:36

and and ducks are a really great

3:38

um. They're like a classic example

3:40

of imprinting because they're very emotional creatures

3:43

um, And they form very strong

3:46

attachments, and they're very social creatures.

3:48

So either they're all those things because

3:51

they form very strong imprinted

3:54

bonds, or they form very strong

3:56

imprinted bonds because of all those things. Yeah,

3:59

well, I think it's a natural selection at work. So

4:02

that's the that's the at the heart of

4:04

this whole thing is you know, is it nature

4:06

versus nurture? And imprinting is

4:09

a really great natural experiment to investigate

4:11

the whole thing. And what it seems like

4:13

we found is that it's both that

4:16

apparently, especially specifically

4:18

precocial ducks are hardwired to

4:20

go seek out and form an attachment,

4:23

but depending on what they encounter at the

4:25

time e g. Their environment, also

4:27

known as nurture. UM, they

4:29

can form that attachment with a stick

4:32

or a toy train or a

4:34

Nazi. It's

4:37

very cute actually when you think about it,

4:40

you know, they're just like, love me whatever, hand

4:43

puppet. What was that Dr. Seuss book? I

4:46

think it was Love Me hand Puppet? I

4:49

think it was Are you My Mother? Like

4:52

Horton makes an appearance in it. It's like some

4:54

animals walking around like are

4:57

you my mother? Yeah, it

4:59

is pretty said, but it's it's basically a doctor

5:01

who's book about imprinting. Oh cool, well

5:04

you mentioned Nazis, so to

5:06

me, that's my que Two segue

5:09

into the life of Conrad

5:11

with A. K. Lawrence, who

5:13

was Austrian born at the

5:16

turn of the century in h three and

5:19

um. He was big

5:21

into animals and he studied

5:23

regular medicine and then decided

5:26

this is great. Humans are fun, but I'm

5:28

really into studying animals and their behaviors.

5:31

That was his bag, so he became a zoologist.

5:34

He did. He got a PhD in nineteen thirty three

5:37

and started work alongside

5:40

Oscar Heinroff, who was

5:42

a fellow scientist with what

5:44

it was the Austrian or German. I'm not

5:46

sure, he's probably one of the two. Well,

5:49

so Lawrence is working, he's already established

5:51

himself as a scientist when the Nazis come marching

5:53

into town and one

5:55

of the things, yeah, one of the things he had to answer

5:57

four years later when he won the nobe

6:00

L Prize for his imprinting work was

6:03

his um zeal And enthusiasm

6:05

basically with which he welcomed

6:08

the conquering Nazis yea, and

6:11

took his ideas about

6:13

domestication and applied

6:16

them to the lens

6:18

of Nazi theory. Yeah. Race,

6:20

like Conrad Lawrence was a

6:22

racist in the purest and

6:25

violist form of the word. Yes,

6:28

it's there's no escaping that. No.

6:30

And he uh, he flat out denied even being

6:32

a party member until it was proven, and

6:34

then he was like, oh, I was forgot

6:37

about that membership, and he very

6:39

much tried to to wiggle his

6:41

way out of that years

6:43

later, um by saying, you

6:46

know, I think

6:48

what how it ends up is he's not the only academic

6:50

that was on the wrong side of history,

6:54

and he came out years later, so like, oh yeah,

6:56

but I sort of got swept up. I didn't really mean

6:58

it in this way. And science

7:00

has kind of divided. Some people forgave him

7:02

and others did not. Yeah, and it's

7:04

um, I think science as a whole has

7:07

forgiven him largely, like science of the capitals.

7:10

But there are plenty of scientists out there who are like the

7:12

guy was a Nazi and he used

7:14

his theories to help the

7:16

Nazi regime, Like He

7:19

was a Nazi psychologist in Austria

7:21

who um was paid to

7:24

examine um German Polish

7:28

uh people, Yes, and

7:31

and basically determined that like the

7:33

the um mating of a German

7:35

person and a Polish person produces

7:37

undesirable offspring. Well you

7:40

throw that out into the Nazi void and see

7:42

what they do with that info. Yeah, they're not gonna be mating

7:44

with Polish people. So this guy is is he

7:47

was a an evolutionary theorist

7:49

of a very brilliant

7:51

magnitude great zoologist, but

7:53

also Nazi and a lot of people calling a

7:55

question like the work that he produced

7:59

um, but again, as a whole, science

8:01

seems to have forgiven him for the most

8:03

part. Yeah, that's a that's a great sort

8:06

of a c o A. It's more like the

8:08

more you know type of thing you

8:11

got to make the star exactly. So

8:14

uh that aside, Let's get back

8:16

to his work with Oscar Heinroth Um

8:18

they were contemporaries and heind Roth he

8:21

was actually the first dude, even

8:23

though he didn't call it imprinting at the time.

8:26

He's the German word, Uh progun

8:29

is that how you say it? Yeah, like

8:31

an a of the newmout sort of you

8:36

that's good, that's sounded Swedish chef. Though,

8:38

yeah, I'll probably get taken a task. But from

8:41

my memory of German

8:43

and college, that's right on the money. So

8:45

uh, Like I said, he didn't call it imprinting at

8:47

the time, but he did study the gray

8:50

lag geese and found out

8:52

that right out of the egg that

8:54

they um can attach

8:56

to humans. And it was a big

8:58

you know, although they did in Rome and ancient

9:00

China, Germans probably thought they

9:02

made it that up discovered it first.

9:06

UM. And another thing that Lawrence

9:08

is criticized for, aside from the Nazi affiliation,

9:11

was that he was um. He very readily

9:13

made an anthrop what's called an anthropic

9:16

shift, where he took his findings

9:18

about animals and was

9:20

very eager to extrapolate them onto humans

9:23

as well, which some people are like, whoa

9:25

budd you haven't you haven't shown that connection

9:28

yet? You can't. That hadn't always work,

9:30

No, but there there has we'll see,

9:32

like come to there's

9:35

a there's an understanding that yeah,

9:37

there's something similar in humans

9:39

and other mammals too, as we'll talk

9:41

about. Uh. So, there was

9:43

one experiment early on where he took some

9:46

goose eggs and separated them out into

9:48

the control and the experimental experimental

9:51

group, and of course the experimental

9:53

he raised separate from the mother completely.

9:56

All this sounds gonna mean too, by the way. Yeah,

9:58

so all imprinting experience

10:00

experiments are about as immoral

10:03

as they get. Yeah, it's like ripping the baby

10:05

right out of the egg or womb away

10:09

from its mother, right and in saying like

10:11

to see what happens right like here, this

10:13

gum boot is your mother. Try growing

10:15

up normal and socialized with

10:18

a gum boot for a mom. No, agreed, You

10:20

know, almost across the board, these

10:22

animals, these are immoral,

10:25

unethical experiments, agreed. So

10:28

the experimental geese only met with

10:30

him, uh, not the goose mom at

10:32

all. And then eventually, to test

10:34

this out, what he did was he put them,

10:36

uh, he put the groups together, marked them, put

10:39

him under a box, and then basically

10:41

sort of like the old experience

10:43

like Brady Bunch thing, to see who calls the

10:45

dog, which when the dog will come to He

10:48

had someone lift the box. He's on one side of the room,

10:50

the gooses on the other, and the ones who

10:53

he had raised came straight to him.

10:55

Yeah, which all bet when they lifted that

10:57

box. It was adorable. A bunch of confused

10:59

duckling sticking around like what was

11:01

that? Right? You're my mommy Nazi

11:04

man, right, the bearded

11:06

nazis my mom.

11:08

Uh. So he finally named it filial

11:12

filial imprinting. I think

11:14

filial filial imprinting. Yeah, And it's

11:16

basically exactly what it sounds like.

11:18

It's that if you if you imprint,

11:22

if you introduced something or yourself to

11:26

precocial bird at a certain stage

11:28

of development, it will say you're

11:30

my parents. Yeah. And he initially called that the critical

11:33

period, right, is the amount of time you had to

11:35

do that? Yeah? So he um his

11:37

studies weren't quite as um

11:41

like well designed his later studies, but he

11:43

basically said, like he assumed, probably

11:45

first ten minutes maybe

11:48

an hour after hatching is

11:50

this critical period. And then

11:52

he also took it a step farther by saying it's irreversible.

11:55

So once once this duckling thinks

11:57

the gum boot as its mom, it's

12:00

always going to be stuck with that duck until

12:02

you eat it. So Lawrence like really

12:05

put a lot out there, and he really

12:07

moved evolutionary

12:11

biology ahead to a degree.

12:14

Ethology is the field that he helped

12:16

found. Um. But we'll talk

12:18

about some follow up studies that supported

12:20

and overturned some of his findings.

12:22

Right after this, so

12:45

chuck Um, Lawrence comes up with

12:48

filial imprinting right then

12:51

later studies in like the fifties and sixties,

12:54

especially by a guy named Eckhard Hess

12:57

and Ao Ramsey who

13:00

a lab in Maryland specifically

13:02

dedicated to studying animal

13:05

imprinting, and they had really

13:07

great control conditions and

13:10

they they really refined Lawrence's

13:13

findings. Yeah, and they studied Mallard

13:15

ducklings again with the ducks

13:18

and um, they found that the

13:20

most sensitive period was thirteen to sixteen

13:22

hours after hatching, which

13:25

was higher

13:27

more hours than I think Lorenz

13:29

had found. Correct. Yeah, he

13:31

he headed down to it like three or four hours, right tops.

13:34

Yeah, and this was I guess

13:36

the ducklings likes to have a little time to

13:38

swim around and get some food, maybe

13:41

take a rest, and then they'll start getting down

13:43

to imprinting. Yeah, and he Um, I thought this

13:45

was super interesting. They also found that the

13:47

ducklings that had to go

13:51

like jump through more hurdles and go through more

13:53

to find the parent

13:56

formed a stronger attachment. Just kind of makes

13:58

sense, like you worked harder for it. All right. I guess

14:00

it's like that Morrissey song. The more you ignore

14:02

me, the closer I get. Man,

14:05

he's the best, the best, ye

14:08

also the worst as far as like canceling

14:11

shows and like, I mean, dude, cannot

14:14

like I don't ever completed a full

14:16

tour. There's no way.

14:18

It's like every

14:20

Morrisey tour. Eventually, if you're on

14:22

the end of that tour, you might as well not even have tickets

14:25

because you're not gonna be seeing Morrisey. Alright,

14:28

that's my little soapbox about

14:30

morris Finish your tour. That's

14:34

right, you mean I had that happened to us.

14:36

You had Morrisey tickets and see, ah

14:40

was it recently? It was in

14:43

the last like two years. He

14:45

should call every tour like the

14:48

Morrissey potential to potential

14:50

tour or first half tour. Uh

14:54

So back to the ducklings. They also

14:56

found that, um, they would imprint onto

14:58

little paper machee that they made,

15:01

which is very sweet colored balls, uh

15:04

colored more than the white ones, which is

15:06

interesting. I guess I

15:08

don't know. They must react to color more. Even though

15:11

the vision wasn't really a part. I thought it was just

15:13

sound. It depends smell and touch.

15:16

So there's a um. There's a PBS

15:18

Nature special called um My

15:20

Life as a Turkey, and it's about

15:23

a researcher who is studying

15:26

animal imprinting and specifically with turkeys.

15:28

Turkeys have astounding vision, yeah,

15:31

just amazing vision. Like they can spot,

15:33

like, um, a screw head

15:35

from a football field away. That's

15:38

small. How do you know did they say screw

15:41

head? Right? Well, yeah, they're known for

15:43

going and rooting out screw heads at far long

15:45

distances. They just stop

15:47

point like a pig within the truffles, right

15:49

exactly, That's what turkeys are used for. Um.

15:52

But so turkey has very great vision, so

15:54

I could see color being an environmental cue.

15:57

Smell, movement, touch.

16:01

Yeah, it's a big one al

16:03

right. So another thing they tried that

16:05

did not work, which I thought was interesting is

16:08

going back even before they hatched and

16:11

using auditory cues in the egg

16:13

and they found that didn't make any difference. But

16:16

it's a good thing to test. The guy on the Nature

16:18

thing though, found the opposite.

16:20

Really yeah, he um, he would talk turkey

16:23

to the eggs. Oh I thought he talked

16:25

turkey once they were born. No, he's while

16:28

they were eggs. He talked turkey to get them

16:30

used to it, right, Yeah,

16:32

and then that's pretty good turkey.

16:34

And then um, after that, uh,

16:37

when they were when they were hatched, they

16:39

he talked turkey again to them and

16:42

apparently they came right over. But

16:44

smells also a big one too. The

16:47

inside of the egg probably smells a lot

16:50

like the mom. Yeah, you know

16:52

that makes sense. So all these environmental

16:54

cues add up to what

16:56

the what this little hatchling is basically mindlessly

16:59

following because again, all of

17:01

this imprinting stuff has found that

17:03

animals at least are

17:05

hardwired to go seek out and

17:07

form these these attachments. Yes,

17:10

and they also found that there that critical

17:12

period was even longer when they

17:14

kept them isolated from birth. So

17:17

they kept them completely socially isolated, they

17:19

would have up to twenty hours to

17:22

imprint. And this caused

17:25

researcher name, oh boy, uh

17:27

well, dav

17:33

Slukan, great name.

17:36

He said, it's actually not a critical period. Let's

17:39

call it a sensitive period, right

17:41

semantics if you ask me. Yeah, but it

17:44

makes a pretty good point. It's basically saying like,

17:46

this thing is not Yes,

17:48

it appears to be hardwired, but it's also malleable

17:52

in the face of nurture, in the face of the

17:54

environment. It can be postponed,

17:56

it can be m altered. Uh,

17:59

it's not sure versus nurture. It's nature

18:01

and nurture in conjunction with one another.

18:04

And so all of this filial

18:07

imprinting that Lawrence first identified

18:09

and really started systematically studying,

18:11

and that was later carried on in birds um

18:14

also led to the discovery

18:16

that birds also

18:19

um imprint sexually as

18:21

well as fill, and

18:24

depending on what they attached

18:26

to filially they will um.

18:29

Their sexual attachments or sexual

18:31

preferences will also be altered later

18:33

on in life. So,

18:35

in other words, a bird that is raised

18:38

by a human will

18:41

eventually try and mate with humans,

18:43

even in the presence of other birds of that species.

18:47

Crazy. Yes, And the reason why

18:49

they think is because um,

18:54

the bird is basically identifying

18:56

with what it's taking as its own species.

18:58

Right, So it will say a, well,

19:00

my parent is a human, ergo I

19:03

must be a human, and therefore

19:05

I want to get with a human. It's a very

19:07

confused bird, right, But there's

19:10

something that they've also found that refines

19:12

this whole thing even further, and that is

19:14

that sexual imprinting is basically

19:17

blocked. They're sexually blind, is what

19:19

they call it, to the

19:21

person that raised them. So

19:24

while they might be attracted to humans, they're not going

19:26

to be attracted their human parent. And

19:28

there's actually something which, um, we

19:31

should do an incest episode. I

19:33

should, Um, that sounds like it's

19:36

you just pulled that out of thin air, but it's remarkably

19:39

similar. Yeah, there's something that's

19:41

been noted in humans called the Westmark effect,

19:43

which we'll have to do an incest episode.

19:46

But super interesting, especially

19:48

coming from like, um, it's like

19:50

a clinical standpoint of viewpoint. Yeah

19:53

sure, and not just like let's do a show

19:55

on incests gross the end, you

19:58

know, look at it sociologically. That

20:00

sounds like a stuff. Uh.

20:03

Back to the birds. Another interesting finding

20:05

here when they were when they studied the

20:07

sexual imprinting. Initially it was with jackdaws, which

20:10

are sort of like crows, and

20:12

they found that there were different types of imprinting

20:15

occurring as they mature. So, in

20:17

other words, one of those jackdaws eight

20:20

with humans flew with crows,

20:23

but made it with Jackdaws. Right,

20:25

So that suggests that they were

20:27

partying. Dude, there are these um so

20:30

well rounded jackdaws. But

20:32

it suggests that there are the the different

20:35

sensitive periods rather

20:37

than just one right, fourteen to

20:39

sixteen hours after hatch hats right?

20:41

Right? Um

20:43

and it you

20:46

maybe you have a filial imprinting like

20:49

pretty early on. That's the first one,

20:51

and then sexual imprinting comes after that.

20:54

Who knows? Who knows?

20:56

Um, Well, we'll talk more about

20:59

Remember I said Lawrence was accused

21:01

of making the anthropics shift a little too

21:03

soon. Sure, well, he was vindicated

21:06

to a large extent. Because a lot

21:08

of this does apply to mammals as well. We'll

21:10

talk about that right after this. Before

21:36

we talk about mammals. Those this quote that I'm meant

21:38

to read before the last break, he talked about

21:40

the guy who talked turkey, Joe Hutto,

21:43

and he has quote he

21:46

said, um, when the when

21:48

the first pulse emerged, he made

21:51

his turkey sound, and as Joe recounts,

21:54

the pulse turned his head, its eyes

21:56

met Joe's and quote, something

21:58

very unambiguous happened in that moment.

22:00

Quote true

22:03

love and the cute. It is cute,

22:05

but a little creepy. You

22:07

know, he's like, you know, we met,

22:09

our eyes met, and it was and

22:12

it was unambiguous. Yeah, so

22:14

anyway, sorry about it. I just had to throw that in there.

22:17

Nice Joe hutto turkey lover. Yeah,

22:19

go watch my life as a turkey pbs.

22:22

Uh, let's say turkey lover and jest he was

22:24

a scientist. Oh yeah,

22:27

he's not a creep. No, creeps

22:29

don't use boards like unambiguous to describe

22:31

connection. They say get in my van. Right.

22:36

Alright, So mammals UM,

22:38

this is not exactly,

22:40

strictly speaking imprinting, but

22:42

they've sort of expanded over the years of definition

22:45

to include, you know, like what happens

22:47

if you rip a monkey away from its mom,

22:50

which has been done yes by a guy named

22:52

Harry Harlow in the fifties and sixties,

22:54

the more despicable scientists involved

22:56

in animal testing. As a

22:58

matter of fact, Harlowe's tests

23:01

with UM filial imprinting

23:03

among mammals and monkeys in particular

23:06

UM led to the animal

23:08

rights movement. It definitely gave

23:10

its steam and a lot of public support

23:13

after UM articles

23:15

and news stories were released about Harlow

23:18

and when he was vilified, he did not

23:21

buckle under public opinion.

23:23

He is very famously quoted as who

23:26

could ever love a monkey? Um?

23:29

Everybody but you. That's what he said in

23:31

response to being criticized, who could ever love

23:33

a monkey? Like, what's your problem? Idiots?

23:36

It's a monkey? Yeah, that's yeah.

23:38

I don't get that.

23:42

They shouldn't be in charge of running tests about

23:44

filial imprinting with monkeys. They can just sit

23:46

there on the sidelines and hate animals. Yeah,

23:49

watch TV or something. Yeah, I

23:51

agreed. Um, watch

23:54

what was the broader movie about monkey desk

23:57

Project X? Yeah that one, just

24:00

watch that on a loop. But the working

24:02

title was monkey see Monkey do Oh.

24:08

You're probably right? Um,

24:10

all right, So back to mammals, right. Um.

24:13

They did some studies in the ninete nineties a

24:15

researcher named Keith Kendrick where

24:17

they and this one doesn't seem like too much

24:19

of a stretch, they switched sheep and goats

24:22

at birth, and um,

24:24

they were allowed contact social contact

24:26

with their own species, but they were raised

24:29

by their adoptive parents, like

24:32

the baby sheep was raised by the goat, but

24:34

they were still allowed to commingle with other

24:36

sheep. And it still worked.

24:38

It turned out that they preferred to mate with

24:41

the species of the adopted parent

24:44

adopted mother. But they also found

24:47

very um remarkably or

24:49

notably, that it's reversible

24:51

as well. Yes,

24:54

they wanted to see how it would hold upright,

24:56

So once a year they would bring them all back together,

24:58

be like, mingo, have

25:01

some there's some cheese plate over there.

25:03

They play a little music. This is after

25:06

right after they had removed

25:08

them from the opposite species, put

25:11

them back with their own species, and once a

25:13

year they said, hey, remember those

25:15

goats that you like so much? Oh, it was like

25:17

that up okay. So, and what they found was

25:19

that among females we could

25:21

say females because we're talking about a different species

25:25

um the females showed

25:27

a preference. They reverted to their

25:30

intra species preference.

25:33

So like they showed like a sexual preference

25:35

for their own species after about

25:37

one to three years after being returned.

25:40

Yes, right, yes, but males,

25:43

even after three years of being um

25:45

ming commingled again, they

25:47

still showed a preference for

25:49

the species that they did imprinted on. Yeah,

25:52

they like the goats are still like, oh man, I

25:54

remember those sheep. And the sheep said

25:56

the same thing about the goats exactly

26:00

where we can go party sheep. Oh.

26:07

I thought that was really interesting though, how

26:10

I mean, there's no explanation, I guess, but

26:13

how the females and the males reacted. You

26:15

know, years later males are stubborn.

26:18

Yeah, I think maybe that's all. It is not

26:21

not quite as agile. There's

26:23

another way to put it. So that's

26:26

cheapen goats. The

26:29

experiments called the old switchero um.

26:32

Harry Harlowe did some experiments and

26:34

he actually um as

26:37

mean as his experiments were, he actually

26:39

managed to basically disprove an ongoing

26:41

debate that had been ongoing

26:44

up until that point, um whether

26:47

or not you form

26:49

an attachment or animals form an attachment

26:51

based on classical conditioning or

26:54

based on some sort of evolutionary

26:57

mechanism. And so the classical

26:59

conditioning people said, no, no, all,

27:01

it's it's all about food. So the animal

27:03

goes up and imprints on whatever is

27:06

giving it food. And what

27:08

it's doing is it's making an

27:10

imprint an attachment with

27:13

the person that gives it food. So you're you're

27:15

looking for the food and you insert the

27:17

person who gives you the food, and then you

27:19

can remove the food and you still have the attachment

27:21

to the person that gave you the food. Classical conditioning

27:24

just standard Freud stuff, Right,

27:27

I punched that button. Food cocaine comes out

27:29

exactly lots more skinnery,

27:31

but yeah, conditioning. Um.

27:35

So with Harlow's experiments,

27:37

he took monkeys, stripped

27:39

them from their mothers in some cases,

27:42

let them get nice and attached to their

27:44

mothers, and then stripped them from their mothers.

27:47

Had all sorts of different designs, but basically the

27:49

upshot was he introduced

27:52

them to two different mothers. They're

27:54

both in animate objects. One

27:56

was a monkey mother made

27:58

of like wire with like spikes.

28:02

They well, they referred to it as the iron Maiden.

28:04

But this one I had food. The

28:06

other one was a inanimate

28:09

monkey mother who was made

28:11

of terry cloth. It was soft, a little bit like a

28:13

teddy bear monkey teddy bear, so to

28:15

a monkey. All of these monkeys showed

28:18

a preference for the terry cloth

28:20

monkey mother. Of course, they would go to

28:22

this wire monkey mother when they were

28:24

hungry and would eat and then would immediately

28:27

go back to the monkey mother. When Harry

28:29

Harlow came in, I was like, whoa who would

28:31

scare them all. They would all go over to the

28:33

terry cloth mother. So he basically showed

28:36

that it's not food. By

28:38

extension, it's not classical conditioning. It's

28:41

it's comfort. It's contact.

28:44

It may be physical protection, but apparently

28:46

it is um. It's it's contact.

28:49

And to make an anthropic shift,

28:52

you can extrapolate that on humans too, because

28:54

there's a drug called oxytocin that

28:56

is released UM, especially

28:59

on skin to skin contact, which is

29:01

why touching and raising UM

29:04

an infant and holding an infant

29:06

is extraordinarily important,

29:09

not just for its development, but also for establishing

29:12

bonds and contact with with that kid.

29:14

Yeah, and especially uh for

29:16

adoptive parents. They say a lot of skin

29:18

on skin contact as soon as possible

29:21

is key to establishing that bond. But that's

29:23

really neat because it means, like the

29:26

the imprinting

29:29

is all about. It basically proves

29:31

family is what you make of it, or

29:34

family is whatever you find is

29:37

your family. It does it's not this pre

29:40

defined structure, it's from

29:42

a from infancy. It's whatever

29:44

you make of Yeah, that's true. Uh,

29:46

And then you know Harlowe was

29:49

like him less and less the more you talk

29:51

about him, But on the other side of the spectrum,

29:54

what we've learned through all this research is

29:56

if you work in wildlife conservation, UM,

30:00

they're not just willy nilly and how they handle animals

30:02

anymore. They go through great pains

30:04

and efforts to uh.

30:06

Like we mentioned the hand puppet. You know, they have Operation

30:09

Condor where they will raise

30:11

these baby condors who are abandoned, and they would

30:13

dress their their hand puppet up to look

30:16

like a mama condor to feed it and

30:18

basically to do everything they can do to

30:20

make sure that they can live a regular life

30:22

in the wild. And they're not looking

30:24

for that iron spiked iron maiden in

30:26

the jungle. Uh. And even

30:29

down to like migratory patterns, they'll use like the

30:32

ultra light planes to later teach

30:34

these birds and they will dress up the plane

30:36

to look like a condor or whatever,

30:39

a duck and you know fly

30:42

uh, you know, the the migratory pattern

30:44

that they should that they should use the route

30:46

and there's one of the researchers is

30:48

inside the glider and that's

30:51

a condor on the p a going phone.

30:55

And the cutest thing ever, UM

30:58

they found out that in uh,

31:00

I think it was in Japan that pandas

31:03

um didn't do so well when they were handled

31:05

by humans too young, so now

31:08

they were panda suits not

31:10

adorable, Like you go to work,

31:13

you punch in, you put on your panda

31:15

suit and you cuddle with baby pandas

31:17

well. That and it's not just

31:19

human contact that can screw

31:22

up, like say a panda um. What

31:24

they found is one of the things that Harlow

31:26

found was that UM imprinting

31:30

has a lot to do with socialization, so

31:32

that even if you just stick a baby with the

31:34

wire spiky iron maiden

31:36

monkey mother, but you give that

31:38

monkey twenty minutes a day to socialize

31:40

with other monkeys, it should turn out okay.

31:44

But even if it has the terry cloth mother and

31:46

it's kept in isolation from other monkeys, they

31:48

in turn tend to make um

31:52

inadequate mothers is what they call them, where

31:54

they just like neglect their children or

31:56

smack them around, or just do all sorts

31:58

of stuff because as their

32:01

mother was inanimate

32:04

object, unethical

32:06

stuff. Yeah, I feel like we owe the band

32:08

Iron made in a big apology. Yeah,

32:10

they're like the bad name.

32:12

Yeah, Like this is just supposed to be a torture device,

32:16

not for animals for you, I

32:20

do. There's a cute salon slide

32:23

show called twenty Heartwarming Stories

32:25

of Inner Species Adoptions. That's

32:28

literally the best thing on the Internet in this

32:30

suite is when you find like a horse cuddling

32:32

with a puppy or raising

32:34

it as its own. There's apparently a lioness

32:37

who's well known in a preserve

32:39

somewhere for um

32:42

stealing antelope calves

32:45

and not eating them, but raising

32:48

them as her own because she wants a

32:50

kid. It's it's unbelievable.

32:53

Animals teaching us the way

32:56

right. You know, who could ever love a monkey?

32:59

Like? Who cares what you look like? Who

33:01

cares what what? Who cares if I'm

33:03

meant to eat you? You know I'm

33:06

gonna raise you as my own? Yeah? Well they I think

33:08

they often display like true

33:11

nurturing love more than a lot of humans do. Uh.

33:15

If you guys want to know more about

33:17

this kind of thing, you can type animal imprinting

33:20

in the search bar how stuff first dot com and also

33:22

go check out our classic episode animal

33:25

domestication. Good one, pretty

33:27

good um, and you can find

33:29

that on stuff you Should Do dot com. And I said

33:31

search bar in there somewhere, so it's time for listener

33:33

mail. I'm

33:36

gonna call this gang article

33:39

recommendation. Hi

33:41

guys, my name is Ciarra. I just finished

33:43

listening to How Street Gangs Work. I thought it would offer

33:45

a piece of literature as a suggestion to people

33:47

interested in reading more about the subject.

33:50

It's called Gang Leader for a Day by

33:52

stood here Vin Kates. It's

33:54

a sociological approach to street gangs in Chicago.

33:57

Started out as a Harvard dissertation with then

34:00

to Cash, asking what's it like to be poor and black,

34:02

and turned into seven years of befriending

34:05

a crack dealing gang leader in the projects.

34:07

It's a really great read, very interesting to see a

34:10

first person account of gang life from

34:12

someone who was not raised in the community which

34:14

gangs prevailed, especially when you learn that

34:16

gangs started to protect black

34:19

people at its base level. So even when you see

34:21

the gang violence brought forth in the book

34:23

pages, you also get to see the gang members

34:25

doing everything they can to protect their community

34:27

members. Uh the name. There's

34:29

a New York Times article if you're interested about

34:32

the book, called if you want to Observe Them, Join

34:34

Them. I think it was like two thousand eight is

34:37

but I read it's awesome, So

34:39

thanks for all the work you guys put into the episodes. I

34:42

love constantly learning something new, except

34:44

for when it's about space. I

34:46

don't want to learn anything about

34:48

space. Okay, it'll make

34:50

me lose my mind. We thank

34:53

you, Sira, Thank you. CIA's

34:56

appreciate it. Go listen to our episode on the Sun

34:59

or the make most people lose their minds

35:01

elevator to the Moon or Mars

35:04

or the Moon. Got

35:06

a lot of them about the space. She's

35:08

like, yep, I've avoided them all. Um.

35:10

We want to know what will make you

35:12

lose your mind topic wise or

35:15

actually in general. Yeah, or if you've ever

35:17

imprinted on the something non human? There

35:20

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35:22

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35:25

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35:31

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