Konrad Lorenz followed by his goslings who would become attached to him.  His seminal work on Aggression tells us that aggression is a survival instinct that makes young of the same species fight to the death for survival if resources are scarce.  However, mothering does not have to come only from a mother goose.  He discovered that when goose eggs were hatched in an incubator with no mother goose present, the goslings followed him rather than a mother goose.  He decided that he had become “imprinted” on them, leading them to become attached to him

 

A video clip of Monty Roberts doing a “join-up” with a wild horse.  I’ve seen him do this for real and it is astonishing to watch, and I’ve helped my daughter do it with her pony in a round pen too after she’d been away for a few weeks.