Konrad Lorenz Autobiography (1973)

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on February 6, 2008
in Books , Evolution and Psychology
.

I consider early childhood events as most essential to a man’s scientific and philosophical development. I grew up in the large house and the larger garden of my parents in Altenberg. They were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals. My nurse, Resi Führinger, was the daughter of an old patrician peasant family. She possessed a “green thumb” for rearing animals. When my father brought me, from a walk in the Vienna Woods, a spotted salamander, with the injunction to liberate it after 5 days, my luck was in: the salamander gave birth to 44 larvae of which we, that is to say Resi, reared 12 to metamorphosis. This success alone might have sufficed to determine my further career; however, another important factor came in: Selma Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgersson was read to me - I could not yet read at that time. From then on, I yearned to become a wild goose and, on realizing that this was impossible, I desperately wanted to have one and, when this also proved impossible, I settled for having domestic ducks. In the process of getting some, I discovered imprinting and was imprinted myself. From a neighbour, I got a one day old duckling and found, to my intense joy, that it transferred its following response to my person. At the same time my interest became irreversibly fixated on water fowl, and I became an expert on their behaviour even as a child.

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