It may well be — but this is still somewhat controversial — that imprinting also plays an important part in the social - ization of altricial species (that is, those that are rather immature when born, e.g., dogs or monkeys).    From Wordnik.com.  [Dictionary of the History of Ideas] Reference

Chicks need food provided by their parents, and rely on them for protection (altricial).    From Wordnik.com.  [Featured Articles - Encyclopedia of Earth] Reference

Derrickson EM (1992) Comparative reproductive strategies of altricial and precocial eutherian mammals.    From Wordnik.com.  [PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles] Reference

Elephant-shrews are altricial animals, meaning that the young require nourishment for a time after birth.    From Wordnik.com.  [DCist] Reference

• This allows one genome to support multiple possible development trajectories, depending on environment (as in altricial species).    From Wordnik.com.  [Recently Uploaded Slideshows] Reference

There is debate among paleoanthropologists over when hominids evolved to become extremely altricial, but these estimates generally range from about 500,000 to 200,000 years ago.    From Wordnik.com.  [PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories] Reference

Corresponding to the precocial - altricial analogy, helping by workers is selected in ants, while new evidence suggests that wood-dwelling termite workers are less engaged in brood care.    From Wordnik.com.  [BioMed Central - Latest articles] Reference

These once viciously carnivorous wolves have physically and behaviorally morphed into altricial beings that compel us to throw them birthday parties, brush their teeth, buy them clothes, and spend more money on their haircut than we might spend on our own.    From Wordnik.com.  [Psychology Today] Reference

With early separation (via an egg or an altricial offspring) females have enough additional control over offspring strategies for garnering nutrition from the mother that there are few paternal strategies involving maternal nutritive supply that can be exploited, and thus, a maternal counter strategy using imprinting need not evolve.    From Wordnik.com.  [ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science] Reference