Io sono qui tu dove sei?: Etologia dell'oca selvatica

by Konrad Lorenz

Documents the social conduct of wild geese with anecdotes about specific geese who take on strikingly human characteristics

Genres: Science, Psychology, Birds

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.
Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early) bond instinctively with the first moving object that they see within the first hours of hatching. Although Lorenz did not discover the topic, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctive bond. In 1936 he met Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, and the two collaborated in developing ethology as a separate sub-discipline of biology. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Lorenz as the 65th most cited scholar of the 20th century in the technical psychology journals, introductory psychology textbooks, and survey responses.

Reviews

[Alessandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molto interessante, a tratti eccessivamente tecnico/accademico.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I disagree with many of the author's theoretical positions, this book is a wonderful defense of observational methods in the study of behavior.