How telling is all that??


Sexual imprinting


[edit]Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the characteristics of a desirable mate. For example, male zebra finches appear to prefer mates with the appearance of the female bird that rears them, rather than that of the birth parent when they are different.^[5] Sexual attraction to humans can develop in non-human mammals or birds as a result of sexual imprinting when reared from young by humans. One example is London Zoo female giant panda Chi Chi. When taken to Moscow Zoo for mating with the male giant panda An An, she refused his attempts to mate with her, but made a full sexual self-presentation to a zookeeper.^[6][7] It commonly occurs in falconry birds reared from hatching by humans. Such birds are called "imprints" in falconry. When an imprint must be bred from, the breeder lets the male bird copulate with his head while he is wearing a special hat with pockets on to catch the male bird's semen. Then he courts a suitable imprint female bird (including offering food, if it is part of that species's normal courtship). At "copulation" he puts the flat of one hand on her back to represent the weight of a male bird, and with the other hand uses a pipette, or a hypodermic syringe without a needle, to squirt the semen into her cloaca.^{[8][better source needed]} Sexual imprinting on inanimate objects is a popular theory concerning the development of sexual fetishism. For example, according to this theory, imprinting on shoes or boots (as with Konrad Lorenz's geese) would be the cause of shoe fetishism.

Westermarck effect[edit]

Main article: Westermarck effect

Reverse sexual imprinting is also seen in instances where two people who live in domestic proximity during the first few years in the life of either one become desensitized to later close sexual attraction. This phenomenon, known as the Westermarck effect, was first formally described by Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck in his book The History of Human Marriage (1891). The Westermarck effect has since been observed in many places and cultures, including in the Israeli kibbutz system, and the Chinese Shim-pua marriage customs, as well as in biological-related families.
In the case of the Israeli kibbutzim (collective farms), children were reared somewhat communally in peer groups, based on age, not biological relation. A study of the marriage patterns of these children later in life revealed that out of the nearly 3,000 marriages that occurred across the kibbutz system, only fourteen were between children from the same peer group. Of those fourteen, none had been reared together during the first six years of life. This result provides evidence not only that the Westermarck effect is demonstrable but that it operates during the period from birth to the age of six.^[9] However, Eran Shor and Dalit Simchai claimed that the case of the kibbutzim actually provides little support for the Westermarck Effect.^[10] When proximity during this critical period does not occur—for example, where a brother and sister are brought up separately, never meeting one another—they may find one another highly sexually attractive when they meet as adults.^{[citation needed]} This phenomenon is known as genetic sexual attraction. This observation supports the hypothesis that the Westermarck effect evolved because it suppressed inbreeding. This attraction may also be seen with cousin couples.
Sigmund Freud argued that as children, members of the same family naturally lust for one another, making it necessary for societies to create incest taboos,^[11] but Westermarck argued the reverse, that the taboos themselves arise naturally as products of innate attitudes. Steven Pinker has written that Freud's conception of an urge to incest may have derived from Freud's own erotic reaction to his mother as a boy (attested in Freud's own writings), and speculates that Freud's reaction may have been due to lack of intimacy with his mother in early childhood, as Freud was wet-nursed.^[12]

Baby duck syndrome[edit]

In human–computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes the tendency for computer users to "imprint" on the first system they learn, then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system.^[13] The result is that "users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems".^[14] The issue may present itself relatively early in a computer user's experience, and it has been observed to impede education of students in new software systems or user interfaces.^[15]