Information – Imprinting – Inhibition
When considering information processing, it’s usually overlooked that it’s unclear what “information” actually is – and what is noise.
The fact that, once this question is clarified, information is processed is a lesser problem.
Furthermore, the existence of innate behavior is often denied, usually in connection with the denial that there is a difference between living and inanimate matter. But life is, above all, one thing: behavior!
And behavior presupposes information – and simultaneously generates it.
Now, a very complex genetic coding would be necessary to determine who, for example, a greylag geese’s parents are based on visual characteristics. This is actually impossible given the combination of variability and uniformity. Somehow, all greylag geese look the same, yet different at the same time.
The instruction “the first object to move near you” is, in contrast, very simple. And at the same time, quite reliable, as long as people like Konrad Lorenz don’t come up with their experiments. This process is called imprinting.
The same applies to inhibition. It would be virtually impossible to genetically define what a predator is allowed to eat and what not.
But it still needs to be ensured that neither the partner, nor the offspring, nor the pack members are viewed as prey, even though they would fit the prey pattern. Inhibition imprinting occurs through living together during childhood in two respects: the adult’s attitude toward their (own) children—and the children’s attitude toward the pack.
This explains why dogs (and not just livestock guardian dogs!), for example, view sheep as pack members to be protected and not as prey when they grow up together, thus creating an inhibition imprint.
And it explains, on a scientific basis, including “Occam’s Razor,” why male bears also eat bear cubs. Not because the mother is more quickly ready to mate, but because the bears, as solitary animals, have never gotten to know their offspring and therefore have not been able to develop the appropriate inhibitions.
The imprinting of inhibitions also highlights how important the first weeks of a dog’s life are for experiencing the appropriate imprinting of inhibitions.
In ethology, however, it is also known that in stressful situations, existing inhibitions can be lost, and, for example, (fox) parents eat their offspring.