Imprinting is a term used in ethology (study of animal behavior) to describe the development of a stable behavioral pattern during a brief period of juvenile life (known as the "sensitive phase") in a social species. It occurs as a result of a timely exposure to a particular stimulus. Imprinting is usually associated with the juvenile's developed recognition of its own species, or of particular individuals within its species (such as its parents). Ethologists have demonstrated that sexual (or species) imprinting and parental imprinting are separate events in the behavioral development of young birds, each with its own sensitive phase.

The concept of imprinting was first discovered by Konrad Lorenz, a German biologist and pioneer in ethology, who recorded the behavior in ducks and geese. Lorenz discovered that a chick will learn to follow the first conspicuous moving object it sees after hatching. Normally, this object would be...