Thoughts on Territoriality
Dec. 12th, 2024 03:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I have often heard that therians have their own attitude towards their own territory, different from humans. But what is behind these words? Comparing your behavior with the behavior of your species is, of course, fascinating, but it is much more important to understand why your species behaves this way and not differently. This, as it seems to me, is the key to understanding yourself and is a very important point, to which I will return more than once in my next articles. In this one, I suggest understanding what is behind the concept of territoriality, how animals perceive it and what it is needed for.
In my life, I have had to change dozens of different places of residence, so from the height of my experience I would like to share with you my thoughts and observations on this topic, starting with a short excursion into my biography and trying not to tire you too much. Later you will understand what this is about.
I spent the first years of my conscious life in a big city, in the same apartment with my adoptive mother, with whom I had a very strained relationship. The pressure from society didn't add to my comfort either, which is why I often ran away to the familiar forest, but not because I was drawn to nature - there were simply no people there. I spent my time no less comfortably in industrial zones - sometimes there were people there, but the main thing was that there were stray cats. I still adore sparsely populated industrial zones and prefer to work there.
As a child, I dreamed of living in the wild in Africa so much that I could not imagine my future life any other way. I literally burned with this dream, imagining in my sleep and in reality how I would live in the wild, where there would be no people. For me, it was a desire for freedom, which I simply confused with the need for security. Once someone told me that, "Freedom is not in Africa, freedom is within you," which at that time I did not take seriously, but now I understand how true these words were.
In 2011, one of my friends (he knows who) invited me to go hiking with him. Was I scared to do it? Of course, but not too much. As a child, everything was simpler: leaving my territory where I didn't feel safe was not the same as leaving the territory where I do feel safe now. And having a person nearby whom I trust (who is not territorial or less territorial than me and therefore calm) greatly dulls the feeling of fear. Unfortunately, there are no such people left for me now.
And so, having freed myself from the oppression of my adoptive mother and moved to a small town (it was also scary to decide on this, but it helped me a lot that other therians I trusted lived next door to me, for which I will always be grateful to them), I settled in a modest garden house, with an area of only 54 sqft. It was an absolutely tiny house with an equally tiny adjacent plot of land. But, strangely enough, I didn't feel uncomfortable there. Yes, I still wanted to build a very large house, but the small area even had its advantages: at least I didn't have to pay huge heating bills in the winter. And I didn't even have to get up from the table to make coffee.
Now that we've figured out how this all works, let's get back to where we started:
- My territory is a place where I feel safe - this is the very basis of territoriality;
- My surroundings should be familiar and predictable, my territory needs to be marked. Not necessarily in the way you might think, it is enough to scratch things or rub against them, leaving my scent on them, which I recognize very well. My scent makes the territory cozy;
- My territory needs to be protected from strangers, and if this is impossible to do, there is a desire to run away or hide. What to do with this urge - you should decide for yourself;
- It does not matter at all where my territory will be, I will feel comfortable anywhere, as long as the point 1 is observed;
- The size of the territory should be such as to ensure my survival. There is no need for an overly large territory;
- Going beyond your territory is always stressful;
- ...but it can be minimized if there is a person next to me whom I trust enough;
- Not all familiar places are mine, there are also "less mine" territories, where I feel less safe than at home - it is not binary value. I would gladly give them up, if it were not for the need to get food;
- If strange leopards appeared on my territory... I would do everything possible to make sure that they were no longer there. No one from my kintype should live on my territory, except for me and my family. What did you expect? Therianthropy is not worship of a sacred animal, it is about being one. With all its pros and cons.
Thus, I can confidently say that I am territorial. Although my territoriality creates a lot of problems for me in life, it absolutely precisely corresponds to the territoriality of my species and there simply cannot be another. Otherwise, I will no longer be me.