Stuff You Should Know - Are You My Mother?: How Animal Imprinting Works

Episode Date: June 18, 2015

What do little baby ducklings have to do with Nazis? A lot actually. Find out about animal imprinting experiments and the debate over their ethics. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. I already love myself enough.

Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles who we took Brian. You're imprinting all over me. Stop. Is that what I'm doing? Yeah, you're rubbing your feathers all over me. I've got a feather duster that I'm tickling you with. Poking me with your beak?

Yeah. I'm not your parents, you know. That's right. Thank God. What a weird intro that was. Yeah. That was and scene. It's called animal imprinting.

I'm sure we've talked about this before, but is it and scene or end scene? We need Joe Randazzo to weigh in on this one. No, we don't. It's and scene. Sure. Common. I'm positive we have talked about this. I know we have, but I don't remember the outcome.

Well, it was me saying it's and scene for sure, and you're going, sure. That's why we're talking about it again. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So animal imprinting. Mm-hmm. It's a thing.

It is. It's a, in the strictest definition, it is only for birds. Yeah. And specific type of birds called precocial birds. Yeah. They are very precocial. Yeah. Exactly.

That means that they hatch out the egg and look around and start waddling and they're like, oh, look, this is water. I have this weird innate urge to get in there and swim. Yeah. Oh, here's a little bit of duck food. I think I'll eat some of that because I have a drive to do that. But what is that wonderful smell? Oh, I think this might be the duck that gave birth to me or laid me as an egg and now I'm

going to imprint myself on you. It's either that or it's a grown human man. Yeah. It can be anything, especially with ducks, but especially specifically precocial birds have a process where they form an attachment to a parent and it's been shown over time that that parent doesn't necessarily have to be a biological parent. It can not even be in the same species. It doesn't even have to be a living thing.

No. It can be a toy train. Yes, it can be or a pair of gumboots. Yeah. And humans have known for a very long time about this process. It just wasn't until the 1900s that we started to get a real grip on it. But apparently there's a Roman treatise around, I guess, the 30s. In the real 30s, I mean like 30 CE.

Not 1930s. No, like 30. Not the swinging 30s. And it basically says if you want to train some wild ducks, go get yourself some duck eggs, put them under a hen that you have domesticated and that hen will raise those ducks as their own and they'll be unwild. Yeah. In rural China, back in the day, rice farmers would imprint new ducks with a stick so they

could then use that stick to guide them out to their rice population where they would eat snails. Right. The rice population. So they're literally following this stick around like it's their parents. So they would lead them to help to work for them basically. And the whole thing is, is the stick was what they were introduced to at a very specific time in their life, usually within a couple hours.

And they said, stick, you're my mom. I'm going to follow you everywhere. When you're not around, I'm going to freak out. It's so weird. Yeah. And ducks are a really great, they're like a classic example of imprinting because they're very emotional creatures and they form very strong attachments and they're very social creatures.

So either they're all those things because they form very strong imprinted bonds or they form very strong imprinted bonds because of all those things. Yeah. Well, I think it's natural selection at work, row show. So that's at the heart of this whole thing is, you know, is it nature versus nurture? Yeah. And imprinting is a really great natural experiment to investigate the whole thing. And what it seems like we found is that it's both that apparently, especially specifically

precocial ducks are hardwired to go seek out and form an attachment. But depending on what they encounter at the time, e.g. their environment, also known as nurture, they can form that attachment with a stick. Yeah. Or a toy train. Or a Nazi. It's very cute, actually, when you think about it. You know, they're just like, love me, whatever.

Yeah, right. Hand puppet. What was a Dr. Seuss book? I think it was Love Me Hand Puppet. No. I think it was Are You My Mother. I don't know, never heard. Like Horton makes an appearance in it.

It's like some animals walking around like, Are You My Mother? Yeah. God, that's awful. It is pretty sad. But it's basically a Dr. Seuss book about imprinting. Oh, cool. Well, you mentioned Nazis, so to me that's my cue to segue into the life of Conrad with a K, Lorenz, who was Austrian, born at the turn of the century in 1903.

And he was big into animals and he studied regular medicine and then decided, this is great, humans are fun, but I'm really into studying animals and their behaviors. Right. That was his bag. He became a zoologist. He did. He got a PhD in 1933 and started work alongside Oskar Heinroth, who was a fellow scientist with, was he Austrian or German?

I'm not sure. He's probably one of the two. Well, so Lorenz is working, he's already established himself as a scientist when the Nazis come marching into town. And one of the things he had to answer four years later when he won the Nobel Prize for his imprinting work was his zeal and enthusiasm, basically, with which he welcomed the conquering Nazis. Yeah.

And took his ideas about domestication and applied them to the lens of Nazi theory. Yeah. About race. Like Conrad Lorenz was a racist in the purest and vilest form of the word. Yes. But there's no escaping that. No. And he, he'd flat out denied even being a party member until it was proven.

And then he was like, oh, I was forgot about that membership. And he very much tried to, to wiggle his way out of that years later by saying, you know, I think what it, how it ends up is he's not the only academic that was on the wrong side of history. No, certainly not. Back then. And he came out years later and sort of like, oh yeah, but I sort of got swept up. I didn't really mean it in this way.

And science has kind of divided some people for gave him and others did not. Yeah. And it's, I think science as a whole has forgiven him largely, like science with a capital S. But there are plenty of scientists out there who are like, the guy was a Nazi. And he used his theories to help the Nazi regime. Yeah. And he was a Nazi psychologist in Austria who was paid to examine German Polish people. Yes.

And basically determine that like the, the mating of a German person and a Polish person produces undesirable offspring. Well, you throw that out into the Nazi void and see what they do with that info. Yeah. They're not going to be mating with Polish people. So this guy is, is, he was a, um, an evolutionary theorist of a, a, a very brilliant magnitude. Sure. Great Zoologist, but also a Nazi and a lot of people call in a question like the work

that he produced. Yeah. Um, but again, as a whole, science seems to have forgiven him for the most part. Yeah. That's a, that's a great sort of a COA. It's more like the more, you know, type of thing. Right. You got to make the star.

Exactly. So, uh, that aside, let's get back to his work with Oscar Heinroth. Um, they were contemporaries and Heinroth, he was actually the first dude, uh, even though he didn't call it imprinting at the time, he used the German word, uh, Pergung. Is that how you say it? Yeah. Like an eighth of the numot sort of a, you know, Perg, Pergung. Oh, that's good.

That sounded sweet as sheffy though. Yeah. So, uh, like I said, he didn't call it imprinting at the time, but he did study the gray lag geese and found out that right out of the egg that they, um, can attach to humans. And it was a big, you know, although they did it in Rome and ancient China, Germans probably thought they made it that up, discovered it first. Exactly. Yeah.

And the other thing that Lawrence is criticized for aside from the Nazi affiliation was that he was, um, he very readily made an anthrop, what's called an anthropic shift where he took his findings about animals and was very eager to extrapolate them onto humans as well, which some people were like, whoa, buddy, you haven't, you haven't shown that connection yet. Yeah. You can't, you know, that would not work. No, but there, there has, we'll see like come to, there's a, there's an understanding

that yeah, there's something similar in humans and other mammals too. Yeah. As we'll talk about. Uh, so there was one experiment early on where he took some goose eggs and separated them out, uh, into the control and the experiment, uh, experimental group. And of course the experimental, he raised separate from the mother completely. All this sounds kind of mean too, by the way. Yeah.

So all imprinting experience experiments are about as immoral as they get. Yeah, it's like ripping the baby right out of the egg or womb, uh, away from its mother. Right. And in saying like, just to see what happens, right, like here, this gumboot is your mother. Yeah. Try growing up normal and socialized with a gumboot for a mom. No, agreed. You know, almost across the board, these animal, these are, um, immoral, unethical experiments.

Agreed. So the experimental geese only met with him, uh, not the goose mom at all. And then eventually to test this out, what he did was he put them, uh, he put the groups together, marked them, put them under a box. And then basically sort of like he hold the experiment, like Brady bunch thing to see who calls the dog, which when the dog will come to, he had someone lift the box. He's on one side of the room, the goose is on the other. And the ones who he had raised came straight to him.

Yeah. Which I'll bet when they lifted that box, it was adorable, a bunch of confused ducklings looking around like, what was that? Right. Right. Nazi man. Right. The bearded Nazi is my mom.

Uh, so he finally named it, uh, filial, filial imprinting. I think filial. Filial imprinting. Yeah. And it's basically exactly what it sounds like. It's that if you, if you imprint, if you introduce something or yourself to, uh, per coastal bird at a certain stage of development, it will say you're my parent. Right.

Right. It's called that the critical period. Right. Is the amount of time you had to do that. Yeah. So he, um, his studies weren't quite as, um, like well-designed as later studies, but he basically said like he assumed probably first 10 minutes, maybe an hour after hatching is this critical period.

And then he also took it a step farther by saying it's irreversible. Yeah. So once, once this duckling thinks the gum boot as its mom, it's always going to think you're stuck with that duck until you eat it. So Lawrence like really put a lot out there and he really moved evolutionary biology ahead to a degree. Yeah. Ethology is the field that he helped found.

Yeah. Um, but we'll talk about some follow-up studies that supported and overturned some of his findings right after this. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running

and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is a risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation, he's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times.

It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now?

You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, Lawrence comes up with the filial imprinting, right? Yeah.

Then later studies in the 50s and 60s, especially by a guy named Eckhart Hess and A.O. Ramsey, who built a lab in Maryland specifically dedicated to studying animal imprinting. And they have really great control conditions, and they really refined Lawrence's findings. Yeah. And they studied Mallard ducklings, again, with the ducks, and they found that the most sensitive period was 13 to 16 hours after hatching, which was higher, more hours than I think Lawrence had found, correct? Yeah.

I think he headed down to it like three or four hours, right? Top, yeah. And this was, I guess, the duckling likes to have a little time to swim around and get some food and maybe take a rest, and then they'll start getting down to imprinting. Yeah. And he, I thought this was super interesting. They also found that the ducklings that had to go, like, jump through more hurdles and go through more to find the parent formed a stronger attachment, just kind of makes

sense. Like, you worked harder for it. Right. I guess. It's like that Morrissey song. The more you ignore me, the closer I get. Man, he's the best. The best.

Yeah. Also the worst as far as, like, canceling shows and, like, I mean, dude cannot, like, I don't know if he's ever completed a full tour. There's no way. He's like, oh, I'm a headache. Like, every Morrissey tour, eventually, if you're on the end of that tour, you might as well not even have tickets. Yeah.

Because you're not going to be seeing Morrissey. All right, that's my little soapbox about Morrissey. Finish your tour. That's right. You and me and I had that happen to us. You had Morrissey tickets in C? Mm-hmm. Oh, was it recently?

It was, it didn't last, like, two years. He should call every tour, like, the Morrissey. Potential tour. Potential tour. First half tour. Yeah. So, back to the ducklings, they also found that they would imprint onto little paper mache ducks that they made.

Yeah. Which is very sweet. Colored balls. Yeah. Colored more than the white ones. Yeah. Which is interesting. I guess, I don't know, they must react to color more, even though vision wasn't really

a part. I thought it was just sound. It depends. Smell and touch. So, there's a PBS Nature special called My Life as a Turkey, and it's about a researcher who is studying animal imprinting, and specifically with turkeys. I read that one. Turkeys have astounding vision.

Yeah. Just amazing vision. Like, they can spot, like, a screw head from a football field away. That's small. How do you know, did they say screw head? Right. Well, yeah, they're known for going and rooting out screw heads at far long distances. Wow.

They just stop and point. Like a pig with, in the truffles. Right, exactly. That's what turkeys are used for. But so, a turkey has very great vision, so I could see color being an environmental cue. I guess so. Smell.

Movement. Touch is a huge one. Yeah. It's a big one. All right. So, another thing they tried that did not work, which I thought was interesting, is going back even before they hatched and using auditory cues in the egg, and they found that didn't make any difference.

But it's a good thing to test. The guy on the nature thing, though, found the opposite. Oh, really? Yeah. He would talk turkey to the eggs. Oh, I thought he talked turkey once they were born. No. While they were eggs, he talked turkey to get them used to it.

All right. Yeah. And that was pretty good turkey. Thank you. And then after that, when they were hatched, he talked turkey again to them, and apparently they came right over. Yeah. But smells also a big one, too.

Oh, yeah. Huge. The inside of the egg probably smells a lot like the mom. Yeah. You know? That makes sense. So, all these environmental cues add up to what this little hatchling is basically mindlessly following because, again, all of this imprinting stuff has found that animals, at least, are

hardwired to go seek out and form these attachments. Yes. So, they also found that that critical period was even longer when they kept them isolated from birth. So, they kept them completely socially isolated. They would have up to 20 hours to imprint. And this caused a researcher name, oh boy, Wladyslaw. Wladyslaw.

Wladyslaw. Wladyslaw. Wladyslaw. Slukin. Great name. He said it's actually not a critical period. Let's call it a sensitive period. Right.

Symantecs, if you ask me. Yeah. But it makes a pretty good point. It's basically saying, like, this thing is not, yes, it appears to be hardwired, but it's also malleable in the face of nurture, in the face of the environment. Sure. It can be postponed. It can be altered.

It's not nature versus nurture. It's nature and nurture in conjunction with one another. That's right. So, all of this filial imprinting that Laurence first identified and really started systematically studying and that was later carried on in birds also led to the discovery that birds also imprint sexually as well as filially. Hey now. Yeah.

Yes. And depending on what they attach to filially, their sexual attachments or sexual preferences will also be altered later on in life. Right. As they mature. So, in other words, a bird that is raised by a human will eventually try and mate with humans. Yes.

Even in the presence of other birds of that species. Right. Crazy. Yes. And the reason why they think is because the bird is basically identifying with what it's taking as its own species, right? So it will say, well, my parent is a human. Ergo, I must be a human.

Right. And therefore, I want to get with a human. Yeah. It's a very confused bird. Right. But there's something that they've also found that refines this whole thing even further and that is that sexual imprinting is basically blocked. They're sexually blind is what they call it to the person that raised them.

Yes. So, while they might be attracted to humans, they're not going to be attracted to their human parent. Right. And there's actually something which we should do in incest episode. We should. That sounds like it's, you just pulled that out of thin air, but it's remarkably similar. Yeah.

There's something that's been noted in humans called the Westmark effect, which we'll have to do it in incest episode, but super interesting. Yeah. Especially coming from like a clinical standpoint or viewpoint. Yeah. Sure. And not just like, let's do a show on incest. Ooh, gross.

The end. Right. You know, look at it sociologically. Back to the birds, another interesting finding here when they were, when they studied the sexual imprinting initially it was with jackdolls, which are sort of like crows. And they found that there were different types of imprinting occurring as they mature. So in other words, one of those jackdolls ate with humans, flew with crows, but mated with jackdolls.

Right. So that suggests that. They were partying, dude. There are these, it's a well-rounded jackdoll. But it suggests that there are the different sensitive periods rather than just one. Right. 14 to 16 hours after hatching, right? And it, you maybe you have a filial imprinting like pretty early on, that's the first one.

And then sexual imprinting comes after that. Who knows? Who knows? Well, we'll talk more about, remember I said Lorenz was accused of making the anthropic shift a little too soon. Sure. Well, he was vindicated to a large extent because a lot of this does apply to mammals as well.

We'll talk about that right after this. I'm Mangesh Chitikathir and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. Lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation, he's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny.

We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out.

I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we talk about mammals, there was this quote that I meant to read before the last break. He talked about the guy who talked turkey, Joe Hutto.

Now he has a quote that he said, when the first poult emerged, he made his turkey sound, and as Joe recounts, the poult turned his head, its eyes met Joe's, and quote, something very unambiguous happened in that moment, quote. True love. Isn't that cute? It is cute, but a little creepy, you know? He's like, you know, we met, our eyes met, and it was unambiguous. Unambiguous.

Yeah. So anyway, sorry about that. Just had to throw that in there. Nice. Joe Hutto. Turkey lover. Yeah, go watch My Life as a Turkey. PBS.

Let's say Turkey lover and Jess. He was a scientist. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. He's not a creep. No. Creeps don't use words like unambiguous to describe connections. They say, get in my van.

Right. All right. So mammals, this is not exactly strictly speaking, imprinting. But they've sort of expanded over the years the definition to include, you know, like what happens if you rip a monkey away from its mom. Which has been done. Yes. By a guy named Harry Harlow in the 50s and 60s, one of the more despicable scientists

involved in animal testing. As a matter of fact, Harlow's tests with filial imprinting among mammals and monkeys in particular led to the animal rights movement. They definitely gave it steam and a lot of public support after articles and news stories were released about Harlow. And when he was vilified, he did not buckle under public opinion. He is very famously quoted as, who could ever love a monkey? Everybody but you.

That's what he said. In response to being criticized, who could ever love a monkey? Like what's your problem idiots? It's a monkey. Yeah. That's, yeah. So I mean people out there like that though that sure, they shouldn't be in charge of running tests about filial imprinting with monkeys.

They can just sit there on the sidelines and hate animals. Yeah. Or watch TV or something. Yeah. Agreed. Um, watch, uh, what was the Broderick movie about monkey testing? Oh, uh, Project X. Yeah, that one.

Yeah. Just watch that on a loop. No, but the working title was monkey see monkey do. Oh, you're probably right. Um, all right. So back to mammals, right? Yes. Um, they did some studies in the 1990s, a researcher named Keith Kendrick, where they,

uh, and this one doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. They switched sheep and goats at birth and, um, they were allowed contact, social contact with their own species, but they were raised by their adoptive parents, uh, like the baby sheep was raised by the goat. Yeah. So they had to co-mingle with other sheep, right? And it still worked. It turned out that they preferred to mate with the species of the adopted parent or adopted

mother. But they also found very, um, remarkably or notably that it's reversible as well. Yes. They wanted to see how it would hold up. Right. So once a year, they would bring them all back together, be like, mingle. Yeah. And they would have, uh, some, there's some, a cheese plate over there, well, they had,

this is a little music. This is after, right? After they had removed them from the opposite species, put them back with their own species. And once a year they said, Hey, remember those goats that you liked so much? Oh, it was like that, huh? Yeah. Okay. So what, and what they found was that among females, we could say females because we're

talking about a different species. That's right. Um, the females showed a preference. They reverted to their intra species preference. So like they, they showed like a sexual preference for their own species after about one to three years after being returned. Yes. Right.

Yes. But males, even after three years of being, um, mingle, co-mingled again, they still showed a preference for the species that they'd imprinted on. Yeah. They like the goats are still like, Oh man, I remember the sheep. Right. And the same thing about the goats. I look forward to sheep day once a year, where we can go party, sheep day, they're the best

cheese plate. Oh man. Uh, I thought that was really interesting though, how, uh, I mean, there's no explanation I guess, but how the females and the males reacted, you know, years later, all males are stubborn. Yeah. I think maybe that's all it is. Yeah.

Not, not quite as agile as another way to put it. So that's sheep and goats. Yes. The, the, the experiments called the old switcheroo, um, Harry Harlow did some experiments and he actually, um, as mean as his experiments were, he actually managed to basically disprove an ongoing debate that had been ongoing up until that point. Yeah. Um, whether or not you form an attachment or animals form an attachment based on classical

conditioning or based on some sort of, um, evolutionary mechanism. And so the classical conditioning people said, no, no, all it's, it's all about food. So the animal goes up and imprints on whatever's giving it food. And what it's doing is it's making an, an imprint and attachment with the person that gives it food. So you're, you're looking for the food and you insert the person who gives you the food and then you can remove the food and you still have the attachment to the person that gave you the food.

Yeah. Classical conditioning. Just standard Freud stuff, right? Yeah. I punched that button. Food cocaine comes out. Exactly. Well, that's more skinnery, but yeah.

Conditioning. Uh-huh. Um, so with Harlow's experiments, he took monkeys, stripped them from their mothers. In some cases, let them get nice and attached to their mothers and then stripped them from their mothers. Yeah. Nice guy. So basically the upshot was he introduced them to two different mothers.

They're both inanimate objects. One was a monkey mother made of like wire with like spikes. It was a toaster. They, well, they referred to it as the iron maiden. Yeah. But this one had food. The other one was a inanimate monkey mother who was made of tarry cloth and was soft. Yeah.

A little bit like a teddy bear, monkey teddy bear. So to a monkey, all of these monkeys showed a preference for the tarry cloth monkey mother. Of course. They would go to this wire monkey mother when they were hungry and would eat and then would immediately go back to the monkey mother. When Harry Harlow came in, I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, it would scare them all. Yeah. They would all go over to the tarry cloth mother.

So he basically showed that it's not food, by extension, it's not classical conditioning. It's softness. It's comfort. It's contact. Exactly. It could be physical protection, but apparently it is, it's contact. And to make an anthropic shift, you can extrapolate that on humans, too. Because there's a drug called oxytocin that is released, especially on skin to skin contact,

which is why touching and raising an infant and holding an infant is extraordinarily important, not just for its development, but also for establishing bonds and contact with that kid. Yeah. And especially for adoptive parents, they say a lot of skin on skin contact as soon as possible is key to establishing that bond. But it's really neat because it means like the imprinting is all about, it basically proves family is what you make of it. Or family is whatever you find is your family.

It's not this predefined structure. And from infancy, it's whatever you make of it. Yeah. That's true. And then Harlow, I like him less and less the more you talk about him. But on the other side of the spectrum, what we've learned through all this research is if you work in wildlife conservation, they're not just willy-nilly in how they handle animals anymore.

They go through great pains and efforts to, like we mentioned, the hand puppet. You know, they have Operation Condor where they will raise these baby condors who are abandoned and they would dress their hand puppet up to look like a mama condor to feed it. Yeah. And basically to do everything they can do to make sure that they can live a regular life in the wild. And they're not looking for that spiked iron maiden in the jungle.

And even down to like migratory patterns, they'll use like the ultralight planes to later teach these birds and they will dress up the plane to look like a condor or whatever a duck and, you know, fly, you know, the migratory pattern that they should use. The route. Yeah. And there's one of the researchers is inside the glider that's dressed up like a condor on the PA going, fall me. And the cutest thing ever, they found out that in, I think it was in Japan that pandas

didn't do so well when they were handled by humans too young. Yeah. So now they were panda suits. Yeah. Isn't that adorable? Yes, it is. It's like you go to work, you punch in, you put on your panda suit and you cuddle with baby pandas.

Well, that and it's not just human contact that can screw up, like say a panda. What they found is one of the things that Harlow found was that imprinting has a lot to do with socialization, so that even if you just stick a baby with the wire spiky iron maiden monkey mother, but you give that monkey 20 minutes a day to socialize with other monkeys, it should turn out okay. But even if it has the terry cloth mother and has kept in isolation from other monkeys, they in turn tend to make inadequate mothers is what they call them, where they just like neglect their children or smack them around or just do all sorts of stuff, because their

mother was an inanimate object. Unethical stuff. Yeah. I feel like we owe the band iron maiden a big apology. Yeah. They're like, you gave us a bad name. Yeah. Like this is just supposed to be a torture device.

For animals for humans. I do. There's a cute salon slide show called 20 Heartwarming Stories of Inner Species Adoptions. That's literally the best thing on the internet. Isn't it sweet? Is when you find like a horse cuddling with a puppy. Right. Or raising it as its own.

Yeah. There's apparently a lioness who's well known in a preserve somewhere for stealing antelope calves and not eating them. I saw that dude. But raising them as her own because she wants a kid. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Animals teaching us the way.

Right. You know? Who could ever love a monkey? Like who cares what you look like? Who cares what? What? Who cares if I'm meant to eat you? You know?

I'm going to raise you as my own. Yeah. Well, I think they often display like true nurturing love more than a lot of humans do. Yeah. True that. If you guys want to know more about this kind of thing, you can type animal imprinting in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And also, go check out our classic episode, Animal Domestication.

Good one. Pretty good. And you can find that on stuffyoushouldknow.com. And I said search bar in there somewhere, so it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this gang article recommendation. Hi, guys. My name is Ciara. I just finished listening to How Street Gangs Work.

I thought I would offer a piece of literature as a suggestion to people interested in reading more about the subject. It's called Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. It's a sociological approach to street gangs in Chicago. Started out as a Harvard dissertation with Venkatesh asking what's it like to be poor and black and turned into seven years of befriending a crack-dealing gang leader in the projects. It's a really great read. Very interesting to see a first-person account of gang life from someone who was not raised

in the community, which gangs prevailed, especially when you learn that gangs started to protect black people at its base level. So even when you see the gang violence brought forth in the book pages, you also get to see the gang members doing everything they can to protect their community members. The name, there's a New York Times article, if you're interested, about the book called if you want to observe them, join them, I think it was like 2008-ish, but I read it, awesome. So thanks for all the work you guys put into the episodes. I love constantly learning something new, except for when it's about space.

I don't want to learn anything about space. It'll make me lose my mind. Weird. Thank you, Ciara. Thank you, Ciara. I'm much appreciated. Go listen to our episode on the Sun. Or the...

That will make most people lose their minds. Elevated to the Moon. Yeah. Or Mars. Or the Moon. We've got a lot of them about the space. She's like, yep, I've avoided them all. We want to know what will make you lose your mind topic-wise, or actually in general.

Yeah, or if you've ever imprinted on something non-human. There you go. You can send us all that info via Twitter at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastathousestuffworks.com, and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatigler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us would

want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help, and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

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