Cross-fostering

Cross - Fostering and foreign care referred to in the field of experimental genetics of behavior a certain type of rearing unrelated young. Here are reversed immediately after birth, for example, the descendants of two mothers.

But the transfer of an embryo from a uterus to another, the so-called embryo transfer is sometimes referred to as Cross - Fostering. Accordingly, one can distinguish between prenatal and postnatal Cross - Fostering.

If, for example, the descendants of one originating from the field, the wild house mouse raised by a white lab mouse - vice versa - the descendants of the laboratory mouse from a tomboy who can ideally including be distinguished with the help of behavior protocols, innate behaviors of socially acquired. This is always the case when certain behaviors of the two groups of test animals differ significantly from each other. Show the "wrong" with the mother grown pups the behavior of their group of origin without being with an animal of this group had ever direct contact, so this behavior can not be learned, but it must be innate.

Extensive Cross - Fostering experiments were carried out since the 1960s in chimpanzees (see Washoe ( chimpanzee ) ). In these experiments, the newborn chimpanzees were reared in a controlled experimental set-up of people who communicated with the chimpanzees exclusively in Sign Language ASL. From the analysis to draw conclusions about the genetic component of the " language " learning should be considered. These studies were mostly to the conclusion that language learning and behavioral reasons in chimpanzees and humans essentially (and not genetically determined ) is proceeding.