What is an “imprint”?

[goshawkr]

I never even took Mr. Simpson's science class... so take my thoughts for what they are worth....

Do you believe this is true? or do you think it's our overly complicated thought processes which push us in that direction! At base level it's as simple as the first thing it sees which is offering it the most important element of it's young life (food) is it's parent figure, My Imprint which I reared myself only shows it's Imprint tendencies towards me both in behaviour when at hunting weight and when in breeding behaviour during the breeding season, if a stranger was to try and court him he shuts down and shows a fear response, this may well change if the relevant handling and work were put in but there is definite individual recognition involved in my experience.

Its not our overly complicated thought processes pushing us, its our overly simplistic understanding of how things work coupled with our simplistic language toolset. We come up with language terms to describe the things we see and experience, and this is a really powerful tool that humans have in transferring ideas from one mind to another. However, we also commonly get caught up in the trap of thinking that the descriptions we use define how things work instead of the other way round.

Keep in mind also that while we all tend to think of imprinting as being focused on identifying a parent, it may also occur in relation to habitat, nesting site, food preferences, etc, etc.

These other things that raptors "imprint" on are quite real as well, although as Ron pointed out they do muddy up the conversation a bit. And like the sexual imprinting that Keith was talking about, they are also not ironclad and irreversible.

As an example of this, about 20 years ago there was a pair of merlins that decided to nest in an urban environment of Vancouver, BC instead of in the deep dark forests. The merlins raised by this pair thought it was normal to live in a city, and kept right at it. Sometimes the city merlins court and draw in forest merlins, and sometimes the reverse happens - so the populations are not completely seperated, but its quite possible to plot the slow general expansion of these city merlins. They showed up in Seattle about 10 years ago, and I am sure have made it several miles south of there by now. In many areas, urban coopers hawks have followed a similar path. Urban nesting peregrines (that survive fledging) rarely turn up nesting on cliffs for much the same reason. And there are many other examples of this - and its NOT just related to hawks nesting in cities. There was a population of tree nesting peregrines in the North East until the late 1800s.

The general model of "imprinting" is also a good way to describe how young hawks get entered on their prey. There is a "golden window" of opportunity where they are trying to figure out what they can catch, and in what situations. After that period of time has passed, they can still learn new prey items, but its not as easy for them. And any prejudices that they develop during that time are difficult for them to shake later on. My first goshawk became convinced that she could never catch a crow once it was in the air because of lessons learned during her "imprinting-on-prey" stage, and it was more than 10 years later and 100s of crow catches before she finally would press the chase when they were in the air.

As a general "loose" model the concept of imprinting works very well to describe and understand a lot of the learning processes in a young raptor that shape its behavior in later life - but NONE of them are "permanent and irreversible" like the scientific literature likes to describe them.