Territorial Humans Part 2

Exploring the territorial instinct of man, woman, cat, and kob.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Brainbow.Today in the podcast, we are going
to be reading The Territorial Imperative byRobert Ardrie and this is going to be
part two. It's a personal investigationinto the animal origins of property in nations.
Real quick, I before before webegin with the continuation of this,

(00:22):
I wanted to tell you what I'velearned so far with cats and looking for
my cat, and things I've neverknown before. I have a lot of
regrets in guilt because as I wassearching for him, there were just things
I didn't understand, Like I wouldjust say. I thought, well,
when he sees me, he's justgonna run to me, and it's going
to be like this fantasy reunion whereit's like a slow run to each other

(00:46):
and we're gonna No, it wasnothing like that. He was. He
was hiding and scared, and that'sthe typical behavior of animals when there were
cats, when they have been traumatizedand when they've been displaced. Cats are
very territorial and they typically only goone hundred to maybe fifteen hundred meters from

(01:08):
the territory. It depends on wherethey live. So if they live like
in an apartment, complex. Thenyou know, it depends if they if
how social they are, if they'reneutered or not neutered, that's going to
contribute to them wanting the socialized.But my cat was neutered and he's a
senior, so he kept to himselfand he you know, he's kind of

(01:29):
slept on the side of the housemost of the time. I had a
GPS track around him, so Iknew his habits very well. And for
a while when we couldn't find him, we were like, well, where's
he going, So we put aGPS tracker on him, and then we
found out he was just sitting therein the the like the bushes where the
ivy is, and you couldn't evensee him, and he's like right there.

(01:51):
So it just goes to show youhow how good a cat could hide.
He could be right by your houseif you know, if you lost
your cat. Typically they only gomaybe one to five houses away. Most
cats when they're found, that's howfar away they are. Something usually scared
them and then they just get youknow, go in a hiding mode.
But my cat was dumped in awildlife area and it was coyote territory.

(02:14):
There's a running joke over there thatwhen people lose their cats, if they
haven't seen them for a week,then they just assumed that a coyote got
them. That's how prevalent it isover there. But it turns out it
turns out that that's not the casereally. Even though it's coyote territory and

(02:35):
everybody assumes that they get eaten assoon as they walk outside, that's really
not the case because coyotes, firstof all, they don't like to climb
trees and go on steep slopes andlook under decks, and there's a lot
of places for cats to hide,and cats, like you know, they
can Like my cat, for example, he would only go a couple of

(02:55):
houses down at the most, butusually you would stay right by the side,
so he would sleep in the samespot like almost all day long.
And cats can sleep for twenty hours, it's not unusual. So a coyote
isn't going to be checking under allthis sorts of stuff. There's an abundance
of food there. There's lots ofrodents, and there's like what are those

(03:17):
rats called that swim in the creek, tons of those. There's all sorts
of ducks and coyotes don't. They'renot like these like you know, people
try over there. They think they'reso tough, like, ah, kyoke
God, he's in a kyo bellyand it's like, no, he's coyotes
eat. There's like apples there too, the coyotes could eat. There's a
lot of different things that coyotes eat. It's not just cats, but that's

(03:38):
what people assume. So a lotof people have lost cats over there.
And it's like this, this areawhere this guy took my cat is known
for coyotes eating cats. So soI recently recently found I'd been tracking this

(03:59):
one cat for like a month becausehe was displaying very similar behaviors to my
cat, and so I knew hewas displaced. I I mean, I
thought he could be a straight too, I thought, But I I didn't
think he was feral, because feralcats they tend to sit and they go
in colonies and they have a lifeof there on this cat was like wolfing

(04:23):
down all the food I had.He chased away six other cats. Three
of them wore indoor outdoor cats,and I I'm not sure what the other
two were. So like one ofthem just showed up and then the other
one. There was one that wasa straight and she and he got rid
of them. At first I thoughtit was a she because he's neutered.
So as I was tracking this cat, I just thought it was a she.

(04:46):
And so finally I I when Iwhen I caught him in a trap.
He escaped miraculously. I don't knowhow, but oh yeah, the
bed there was like a little therewas like a get nearby that got caught,
so just like one inch. That'san everything about cats. They could
squeeze through the tiniest holes, tiniestcracks and holes, and yeah, they're

(05:10):
really good at that and so superclever, and they're tough, and they
can go a long time without eating. And then they could just sit there
and wait for a mouse to goby and then eat the mouse. And
so that's usually how they hunt whenthey're in this mode, is they lay
low and all they need to dois eat one mouse a day, and
I think they'll be okay for awhile. So I catch this cat after

(05:35):
a month, and he was theonly one I was feeding besides one other
indoor outdoor cat. That's when Irealized that, well, my cat wasn't
coming to me. Because he waspushed out by another stray, and then
this other cat pushed out the othercat. So anyways, long story short,
I wind up catching the cat eventually, and it turns out he had

(05:59):
been missing for form. They gaveup hope long ago. They thought that
a coyote got them because five blocksfrom the creek. I found him just
like a block from the creek.We're also looking for my cat. So
he was five blocks. He's onehundred and twenty fourth and I caught him
one hundred and twenty ninth Street.And he was just acting like when he

(06:20):
was in the trap, the cage, he was acting like a wild cat,
howling, growling. It just Iwas scared, like I didn't want
to pick up the cage. EventuallyI worked up some nerve and put a
blanket on it, you know,to make sure that he didn't claw me
me or anything. I was neverafraid of a cat my whole life,

(06:41):
and I used to play with farrelsover in Chicago. My cat, one
of my cats growing up, waslike half faral, like he lived with
a Farrell colony. But when timesgot tough, he would come. He
would climb up on the roofs andjump over and once, you know,
he'd come back home every now andthen after he got in a fight or
something. So so yeah, youknow, I was I kept the cat

(07:02):
for a couple of weeks because Icouldn't take him to the vet. I
couldn't get him back into cage becausehe was just aggressive. The first day
he hid underneath the bed, andthen after about twenty four hours he was
he was okay, but still it'slike he wouldn't let some people near without
hissing ada mc growling. But hewas okay with me, and he was

(07:26):
okay with my daughter. My daughteris the one who was the first one
to get him to warm up.And so then after a while, I
finally was able to get him intoa cage to take him to the vet.
They scanned him. He had amicrochip. Thank god, he had
a microchip. That's how I knewwhere he was from. Otherwise I would
have no idea because like these blacktabbies, they all look the same,

(07:47):
like you have to be really goodwith your observation skills to like I mean,
for a while I thought it wasthis other cat, but they all
looked you know, they're all verysimilar. But I thought it was that
one cat that had gone missing hisowner and I were like eighty percent sure,
but then I then I finally dawnon me. I was like,
well, there's one back paw thatis like lighter, and then then you

(08:11):
know, we're like, yeah,it's not him. Wanted it to be
him because she'd been missing him fortwo years, but this cat was missing
for four months by the creek.So you know, I'm walking around and
I'm still looking for my cat fora while, and so I talked to
this lady and she's like, well, honey, let me tell you a
story, just like one of thesenot dolls. Uh, you know,

(08:33):
everybody around here has lost a cat, and if you haven't seen him in
a week, yeah, I hateto tell it to you, but he's
uh, he's coyote food now.And I'm like, and I told her
this story. I was like,well, you know, I've been tracking
cats around here and there's a coupleof strays that have been around for a
while. I caught one that washere for four months. And she's like

(08:54):
looking at me, and her head'skind of like going all different directions,
like she just wants me to shutup, Like she's trying to say no,
and I'm just talking, talking,and I'm telling her facts, and
I'm like, you know, mycat has been here since June first,
and it's now November. But wesaw him, you know, the last
my song was in August. Sohe lived through the fireworks in July,
June, July, August. Hewas here at least three months, and

(09:16):
that was the hardest. We hadheat waves, we had fireworks and the
initial shock of being displaced here onJune first. And she's like, well,
you know, like because she losta cat too, she thought she
knew everything. And when she toldme that, she did not want to
hear it, and she was likeangry at me. She's like, I'll
tell you what. Nobody wants youaround here and whatever. So but the

(09:41):
good news is I heard my cats. He's right around here somewhere. I
heard him on a couple of days, a couple of nights ago, and
I heard, like I was justwe're just about to go to sleep,
a turn of the lights, laydown to bed, and then I hear,
I hear this distress call. Ifyou don't you know what a cat's

(10:01):
distress call is, like, it'sit's just like really sad like cry,
and I know it was Oobie,but his voice was a lot hoarser,
and I was like, got upright away, put in my contacts,
and I went out there and Ihad to stand out there for about another
ten minutes before I heard it again. And then it sounded like, let

(10:28):
me see, how can I putthis? Like he was moving around,
so I knew he wasn't in atree, but it's sound. I mean,
it's really when it's dark, it'shard to know where the sounds are
coming from. But it had tobe just a couple of houses away.
Unfortunately, it was toward the neighborsthat you know once that took my cat.
So I was just standing there waitingto hear it again. I didn't

(10:52):
hear it, so I went backin the house and then sat in the
bedroom and I was like, thelast thing I want to do is scare
him away. So so I'm likeI'm sitting in I'm sitting in bed,
and I'm just trying to be quietand not not like ite's my excitement,
you know, take over. Andthen I hear on the front porch like
the growl that I heard from thisother cat that I rescued and I heard,

(11:16):
I heard it. Something hit thewindow and then my cat ran.
My other cat ran into the kitchen. Gracy. Now this Gracie, she's
like a little miniature cat, andshe's she's well, okay, she's very
like all animals are. When theyknow that they're in the right, they
stand aground. And she, youknow, she chased away this other cat

(11:37):
that lives a couple of doors down, so that's not her natural response.
When she sees a cat outside,she growls and hisses and she'll try to
down the door to chase them away. So that's another thing that told me
it's obi because the cat came tothe window and made like an aggressive howl
and snarl and hissed. Gracie ranoff, and the cat hid the window

(12:01):
too, And then I put foodoff, put the trail camera out,
and the next day I didn't.I figured, well, i'll see him
if he's If he's around this far, he made it this far, he's
not going to just run off.The only way he'll run away is if
I scare him. And so Ijust you know, listened and waited and

(12:24):
put out all the food I could, and I left a window open.
The window he used to go throughthat. He actually tore the screen off
and so I left that cracked andI woke up and I chucked the trail
camera. There's nothing. So thenI talked to this cat expert. She
told me, well, you gottamake sure there's no other cats coming around,

(12:46):
which I had, like this othercat coming around because he's just a
friendly cat. She's like, youhave to make sure that there's no other
cats around, and that he feelslike it's his territory and he's just coming
by, like he still has thatinstinct where he feels like he has to
fight for his territory. Unfortunately,that's the last My cat is not a

(13:07):
fighter. He would he never gotin a fight in his life. I
mean never came home with the scratch. And when I would go for walks
around the block other cats, whenthey would be aggressive with him, he
would he would go back home orhe would well, he would stand his
ground a lot. Do you juststand there and wait and you know,
but he wouldn't even go around theblock unless I went with him. He

(13:28):
just didn't, you know. He'skind of like a laid backslacker type of
cat that slept a lot and he'ssuper peaceful guy, and I just hate
that this happened to him. So, okay, it's been about this is
the fifth night, and I gotrid of all the other cats around here.
I had to keep walking them backhome, and I'm just hoping that

(13:52):
he'll show up again. She saidthat it's you know, this is to
be expected that you know, inthe situation, cats that are just normally
displaced, just houses away, andthey've been chased, maybe fireworks or something
scared them and they just got youknow, went into that kind of mode
real quick. She said that he'scloser than you think, probably, and

(14:13):
he might even just be watching youfor a while, probably just watching you
until he thinks it's safe, feelslike it's safe. And so you're not
supposed to call him all the naturalthings that you just want to do,
like don't try to don't try toget them, because they'll just run away.
So I wanted to lead in withthat because when it you know something

(14:37):
about I should have known this aboutterritory, right, like I played with
cats. I you know, I'venever heard about this before. But in
this book, which is all aboutterritorialism, this guy says it's in every
species and we don't even think aboutit because it's just so innate. It

(15:01):
just and also there's this tendency toanthropomorphosize and to want to see yourself as
something that maybe you're not, becausethe truth is just makes doesn't make it
feel good, doesn't give you thatsense of superiority when you realize that we're

(15:22):
just animals and a lot of ourbehaviors are driven by instinct. Okay,
I am going to begin sort oflike where I left off. Now,
this writer, he's he's just amazing. He's very similar to like Conrad Lorenz
or Jane Goodall and how they're They'repoetic and their style of you know,

(15:46):
their style of writing isn't like,isn't dry academic academics. It's like it's
it's just it's like poetry almost.It's very like, I don't know,
it just it rings of truth.You know, if you think about like
what is science. Science is thesearch for truth, and the way to

(16:10):
find truth is not just through throughdry experiments, because a lot of our
biases and preconceived notions could blind usto the setup of the experiment itself,
or you know, whatever it is, whatever our theory is okay, I'm

(16:36):
gonna start here in page thirty three, and it looks like this chapter five.
I believe furthermore that what we callthe age of anxiety is in truth
a transitional time, an uncertain momentin the adolescence of a species, when
the superstitions and imaginary identifications of childhoodare no longer enough, but the larger
comprehensions of maturity are yet unavailable.In such an awkward emotional age, we

(17:00):
lose faith in fathers divine or domestic, and yearned for more suitable stars to
steer by. Okay, so thiswas written in I think it was.
Let me just double checked nine,nineteen sixty nineteen sixty six. So we
lose confidence and authority. We feelourselves children of inconspicuous circumstance, dry leaves

(17:25):
tumbling before unimportant winds, victims ofworlds not of our making, willless trespassers
on dubious pastures. Yet self knowledgecannot be denied. Maturity must come.
It was only a generation or soago that the physical sciences added the dimension
of time to their free to theirthree dimensional calculations of matter and energy,

(17:49):
and with a single mathematical lead plungedus into the world of the atom.
It is a world of exhilarating,as exhilarating as it is hazardous, world
to stir the most stagnant of imaginations, even as it frightens the most dashing
souls. Above all, however,it was the feet of the physical sciences

(18:10):
to present man with the confidence thathe was the master of material things.
It is the turn now of biology, I believe, to extend our calculation
of man by the addition of thatsame fourth dimension time. It will be
a leap, I believe of notincomparable consequence. There will be the terror
of a sort in losing once andfor all, this comfortable pupia like three

(18:33):
dimensional chamber of human uniqueness, theonly world we have ever known. And
there will be the hazard, mostparticular hazard, and the chance that we
may discover ourselves the pale prisoners ofa determinate past, whereas before we are,
at worst the nervous victims of anindeterminate future. But it is a
chance I believe worth taking, inpart because I have reason to suspect that

(18:56):
this will not be Biology's answer,in part because I believe that the winning
of self knowledge is worth every risk, and in part because I have no
choice or truth is peering in mywindow and I can cannot ask him to
go away. Okay, what he'sgetting at is it doesn't come out until
much later. I mean, it'sonly recently where we start talking about like

(19:18):
quantum mechanics and more metaphysical types ofscience, metaphysical science, quantum science,
so to speak. So this isnineteen sixty six, and even before that
he had these these inklings of hey, there's something else going on here besides

(19:40):
just this physical world. There's youknow, it's like there's psychological factors and
things that he isn't aware of yet, but that he feels compelled to investigate.
And it's because it's he's he's goinginto like sort of dangerous ground,
because well, you discredit yourself whenyou start going off into woo woo type

(20:08):
of science. One of the nineteenthcentury thinkers most influenced by Darwin, most
despised by fashionable thoughts today, wasHerbert Spencer, and in a minor forgotten
work he once recorded a major everlastingthought, The profoundest of all infidelities is
the fear that the truth will bebad. I may quake in my boots.
I may shake in my bed,but I do not have the courage

(20:30):
to live a life so dangerous asthat of a gambler against the truth.
I thought that this quote was it'sa lot of you know, he's got
a lot of really good quotes inhere, But I don't have the courage
to live a life so dangerous asthat of a gambler against the truth.
But of course he's very a courageousperson to even be talking about such taboo

(20:51):
subjects that could get you censored andcanceled and discredit it at the time.
Well even now, even now talkingabout these things, well, is it
even I mean, do we actuallylook at people as if we're animals or
do we like class do we havea biased perception of people as if the

(21:18):
behaviors aren't instinctual? And that territorialismisn't something that has to do with any
moral code. But it's just asbase as any animal instinct, any territorial
animal instinct. Okay, so hesays, the protozoa or is it the

(21:42):
egg that once I was has hiseye on me, and he knows all
about me, all my secrets,for he was there when I began and
he knows when I'm lying, andhe is watching me right now, just
as he watches you. I lovehow he you know, says it.
You know, Okay, you can'thide from the truth, and you know

(22:03):
you're being watched and eventually time's goingto reveal all the truth. So be
honest because you know you don't wantto have any regrets. He's talking to
the scientists probably who are reading this, like, you know, do you
really want to gamble against you?Do you want to play a game against
those that are holding cards about thetruth? Well? Okay, many many
years go by and none of thiscame out. I mean, I remember

(22:25):
when I was in high school inthe nineties. People, you know,
my teachers were like, animals don'thave emotion. It was just like,
we don't even question animals don't haveemotion. It's if you think they do,
it's because you're projecting that onto them. Animals are just you know,
they're just animals. Okay. Thethe the uganda cob is among a month.

(22:52):
Okay, Now, the cob,I'm not familiar with this animal,
but it looks like an antelope,like an African antelope. Is among the
supreme view of the odist of theantelope world, a photographic delicacy for antelope
connoisseurs. Less graceful than the impala, less majestic than the kudo, and
with its corkscrew horns, the cobhas a sturdy elegance, unlike either.

(23:17):
His coat is a golden brown,like proper toast. There are black and
white markings about his face, andthey very considerably, so that two cob,
like two people, seldom look quitealike. He stands about three feet
high at the shoulder, and hisneck is so long, his curved lrate
horns are so sweeping, his eyesdark regard his fellow cob so imperiously that

(23:41):
he seems much larger. He isa superb beast, and in nineteen sixty
I thought I knew all about him. I spent the month of June of
that year in the eastern Congo andwestern Uganda, home base for the Cob.
It was the last month of rule, and while things were still quite

(24:03):
in the Congo, it required theassistance of no witch Doctor's Bones to inform
us to what would happen next.Tourists vanished. My wife and I were
the last two guests at the Congo'smagnificent game reserve the pair Albert, we
had it to ourselves. My herobicquantity qualities, however, are less than

(24:25):
notable. So when independence stay came, we too cleared out the area,
managing to reach Uganda's capital before theCongo blew up behind us. There were
many occasions in that depopulated month whenwe could not put aside the sensation of
being either the last two people inthe world or the first. We shared
the African sky, the yellow oneending savannah, the choked, narrow strips

(24:48):
of forests along swirling streams, thehazy, gray blue central African lakes,
with our hosts the elephant, thebuffalo, the hippo, the lion and
topee and waterbuck and cob. Wewere their only guests. A sense of
extraordinary intimacy pervaded our arrangements. Thecob must have water every day, and

(25:11):
so he favors this area around LakesEdward and Albert. For hour upon hour,
we watched herds grazing on some longyellow slope. Impala like family parties
with a dozen or fifteen does anda master ram, or perhaps again like
the Impala, all male bachelor partiesand the does watched us raising their long

(25:34):
necked, delicate, hornless heads outof the deep grass. Ears raised like
signs a V for victory, asdid the males with their challenging eyes and
s curved swept back horns. Mysense of intimacy came to include a sense
of authority. On the way outof Cobb Country, I discussed them with
the director of the Uganda National Parks. When many months later I returned to

(25:57):
my writing table and row the conclusionwas inescapable of that so far as the
cob was concerned, I knew everything. This is kind of like how these
people that I am encountering that arelike, that's that's just what it is.
If you know, coyote got himif he's not there. I mean,
I hear this all the time.I don't take It's not like they're

(26:18):
trying to be mean. It's justthat's what people think. But when you
have a belief and it's unquestioned,there are some people that get mad when
you present them with evidence that thatthat their whole preconceived notion is wrong.

(26:40):
And instead of saying, oh,that's a great thing, you know now
I should look into that. Andthat's really interesting. There are some people
like that, But then there areyou know, the ones that are I
notice the more ter the ones thattell me to get out and don't come
around. They're the most territorial neighbors. They think they own the whole thing.
And it's like, well, thisis this is a public road.
I could walk on the word Iwon't go on your property, but you

(27:02):
can't tell me to leave the neighborhood. But there, yeah, I noticed,
Okay, So the more territorial theyare like that where they I'm gonna
call the police on you for lookingfor your cat. The the more of
an attitude of like I know everythingand I will resent you if you try
to tell me otherwise. There wasthis other encounter I had with this woman

(27:30):
who was a cat trapper. Shesays she trapped over two thousand feral cats,
and she was really mad at me. And I couldn't understand the time,
Like, why are you mad atme? Because I'm telling people that
my cat is acting feral and he'sin you know, he's in combat mode.
She's like, you can't, he'snot feral. Faro cats are completely
different. And I was like,I have the experience of faro cats too,

(27:51):
and yeah, it's like I couldnever catch a feral cat. If
you caught him, they would clawyou and do anything that they can.
They would think that they're dying ifyou, you know, try to pet
them or they you just can't petthem and play. I mean I would
play with them by like you know, feeding them, and it was exciting
if you ever were able to touchone. But I you know, I

(28:11):
named them all and watched them andI'd play with them like that. And
then my cat was like, youknow, sired a bunch of cats that
were black and white just like him. So I mean I played with him
in a sense with you know,with my cat, and just it was

(28:33):
always a it was a challenge totry to gain their trust. So she
anyway, she was she she justhad this attitude with me where she was
like, no, it's he's justscared, that's all. And it's like,
no, it's not just that he'sscared. He's completely changed. He's

(28:55):
like his I mean, it's likemy cat doesn't I can't amage. It
was just such a huge change inhim, and I knew that it was.
It was like he had an epigeneticchange almost where he goes into shock
and he's not acting right, andso well she okay. It turns out
the reason why she's so mad aboutthis is because here she is getting paid

(29:18):
and her job is to is totransport feral cats. So she catches feral
cats. And they may not beferal. They may just be like a
displaced cat or someone's pet that justwent into survival mode, maybe hooked up
with a feral cat colony if itwasn't neutered, or if it was a

(29:40):
female that they accepted, but theyI don't think I wanted any part with
a newter male that's a senior.So who knows how many cats are like
winding up as strays they go tothe shelter, they're unadoptable because they're like
completely a cat that in this mode, Like the cat I trapped, There's

(30:03):
no way that I worked at ashelter. There's no way they would put
the animal down back then, andyou know, I worked in dender and
they would say that it's unadoptable.Now they you know, they may tell
the public, oh, yeah,we have like a ninety five percent adoption
rate. Well that's not including theunadoptable pets. Now unadoptable would mean that
they're too old, or they're sickor like disease, like they're gonna,

(30:26):
you know, have a disease that'sincurable, or they're aggressive. Aggressive animals
in the shelter get put down.So I had this other one get really
mad about me for saying that.She's like, no, we we do
everything we can, and when ifwe get astray and that's aggressive, we
do everything. It's like, well, what are you doing with them?

(30:47):
And I found out, well,you know, they put them back,
they new to them, and theyput them back into a feral colony.
That cat is a goneer then becausethey tag its ear and they say,
okay, it's now it's a feralcat. There's no chance of that cat
ever being reunited with his owner ifhe doesn't have a microchip. So if
you know, you guys are listeningto this, get your dogs and cats
micro chips, because you never knowif it winds up like that. It

(31:10):
just is like a smaller vanigrain andrice and it goes in the back of
their neck and you know, theyscan it and then the number comes up.
You register it, you know,put your phone number on it,
and then you could be reunited withyour pet like that. If this cat
that I rescued didn't have a chipand got picked up by one of these
people, he would just be consideredlike astray, maybe go to a barn

(31:30):
or something like that, could notbe adopted. It took me weeks to
get him calm enough just to goto the vet. And then when I
took him to the vet, thevet had to put on the special handler
gloves. You know. She's like, how did she get him in the
cage? And I was like,well, he got to the point where
he trusted me, so when hewas sleeping, I just picked him up
and put him in there. Butlike, yeah, she would she just

(31:52):
tried to scan him if she hadto work gloves like that. So yeah,
there's this. I don't know ifyou if you guys, are you
know, wherever you work, yougot to be aware of that. Territorialism
extends beyond just physical property. Butit's also like the arena of beliefs could

(32:15):
just be like a religious I thinkthis explains prejudice and genocide and wars and
everything. The territorialism instinct, Likeif if you believe that you're right about
something like you should, you know, if you love animals, you should
be well like, oh, I'mglad that you found this out. Well,
I'm gonna explore that because I don'twant to be trapping people's pets that

(32:37):
are displays. I want to learn, but instead they just want to cover
it up. So, you know, I guess we shouldn't assume that when
people are covering stuff up, it'snot some malicious intent where it's like they're
evil. It's like, no,they're just stupid and they have this instinct
of territorialism that they have no controlover because them, they can't handle being

(33:02):
wrong. It's just too hard forthem. And some people are more humble
and they if they really want thetruth, it doesn't hurt. You know,
it could hurt, but it's like, well, you know, you
suck it up and got you gottamature. I don't think that it's even
possible for some people to do that, Like that lady sitting on her front

(33:23):
porch, so it told me toleave. I think that, you know,
maybe subconsciously she's like she probably hada oh shit moment, like oh,
I gave up on my cat aftera week, and don't tell me
that he could have been alive andsuffering, like, don't get away from
me, don't tell me that.Imagine if you're trying to tell people you
know about safety of the water andjust like, oh, you know,

(33:49):
like we should be recycling instead ofthrowing the garbage all over the place.
You know, you know, youknow how this is. Every time there's
some kind of change in the program, there's always these people that are like
they don't want the change. Andit's not just because they're an asshole,
but it's because there's a territorial instinctwhere they have to own what's around them

(34:13):
and they have to control things andbe right in order to feel safe,
just like a cat doesn't feel safewhen it doesn't own its territory. They
can't help it that they're aggressive theyor that you know, my cat was
never aggressive before, but you knowthe way I heard him outside, he's

(34:34):
doing it because he's afraid. Sowhen people are acting that way too,
it's because they're afraid. So howdo we get these territorial people to get
into a state where they could bereasonable and hopefully mature so that we don't
keep doing stupid things that are causingourselves harm and causing others harm instead of

(34:57):
being aggressive because we're scared or in, instead of you know, hiding our
heads because we don't want to hearthe truth, you know, just like,
come on, Obi, just comecome here. He's like, no,
he his instincts are kicked in.And people have instincts too, and
you can't just like say stop doingthat because it doesn't get through to them.

(35:19):
It takes a lot of time,it takes a lot of patience,
and it takes just a lot oflove and faith too. Not everybody has
that, I know, I don't. I don't have that. I have
it for kids and animals, butI don't have it for adults because I
see them as equals, like Idon't. I can't. I just maybe
when I'm older, maybe I'll beable to like, oh, you're just

(35:42):
like this little, you know,fifty year old angry person. Like I
look at you and I'm like,you know, it brings out the animosity.
I don't have compassion for it.So there's a lot of people that
are struggling, whether you know they'reat work or if you happen to be
one of these, you know,these cutting edge scientists who are on the

(36:06):
you know who are making groundbreaking discoveriesand you're in your like Loretto Graciana Bruning,
you know, like she has todeal with this too. You know,
maybe it's not just some major coverup conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry.
They don't want to expose that behaviorand emotions and thoughts and emotions cause neurochemicals

(36:28):
and and if that, if thatgets out, then there will be no
need for you know, medical thatwon't medication won't be the route to go
unless it's like, you know,they're gonna kill themselves or something. But
yeah, so it could be amore complex and some various things. I

(36:52):
mean that there are I mean,there are people that know that they're lying,
and they would rather like silence anddiscredit others just so that they could
be right, because they maybe they'llget in trouble and so they're protecting them.
And so maybe those people like knowthat they're lying. But I think

(37:16):
there's a lot of people that justlike, I don't think this woman sitting
on her porch has any agenda towant me to shut up and not hear
that this other cat was living therefor four months and my cat was there
for months too. I don't thinkshe wants to hear that because of any
other agenda other than the fact thatyou know, she's got this territorial instinct

(37:37):
dinner that just wants to be right. Okay, let's get back to the
book. It was three years beforeI had the opportunity to return to Uganda
after the war Rome. As weleft, boiled like a chicken on a
midsummer grill, we deplaned on thehigh cool equator with the joy of escaped

(38:00):
prisoners who have somehow eluded the hotseat. The air of Kampala, most
adorable of African capitals, was thatof a shaded garden, newly watered disley.
I embraced the panorama, the templesand churches topping its hills, the
blossoms and bank buildings, Indian merchants, African politicians, and black jackets and

(38:22):
black silk ties, Baganda students,the university's green lawns on the veranda of
the Grand Hotel. It had beenthe Imperial on my last visit, but
that, of course, had beenbefore Uganda's independence. I met an old
friend, an anthropologist, who couldscarcely wait to get past proper greetings so
that he might pull at his beardand inform me that for over a year

(38:44):
that had been an American scientist aroundwho had been looking for me, who
claimed he had a bone to pickwith me, and who said that everything
I had written in African Genesis aboutthe Uganda knob, Cob, I'm sorry,
Cob was wrong, all right.This is before cell phones, before
for the internet, and it washard for him to get in contact.
For a year, he'd been readingthis guy's he was, you know,

(39:08):
writing a lot about the cob andthis antelope thing, this antalope animal,
and he was, you know,just he had a bone to pick on
me. He was really mad aboutsome of the things. I was outraged.
Professionally, I was outrage and Iquoted my observations and my authorities,
while my friend just shook his headand nursed his happy secrets. Personally,

(39:28):
I was outraged that friends could proveso faithless, and I condemned his soul
to dust. But spiritually I wasworse than outrage, for I had been
back in Africa for only two hours, and already I had been ambushed.
My euphoria was gone, and therewas nothing I could do about it.
I inquired gloomily as to what itwas that I had got so wrong about
the Uganda Cob territorial behavior, saidMarrik Poznanski joyfully. I demanded the name

(39:54):
of the American scientists who knew somuch. He said. His name is
spelled b u E c HNR.A pity he had to go back to
the United States two weeks ago.He beamed evily, but a Swiss assistance
in town that afternoon. I methis assistant, Walter Lutholdt, the assistant

(40:17):
from Zurich. He was pink faced, young, amiable, apparently harmless.
But when tea and his story werefinished, my vanity was finished too.
The family parties that I had watchedfor so long were the most casual social
relationships. He's talking about the Cobbfamily parties. Not in a thousand Cob

(40:38):
years would one of those imperious rampshave sexual relations with a member of his
seeming harem. Copulation by general speciesagreement is left exclusively to a dozen or
fifteen males out of every population ofeight hundred or one thousand, who discharged
their massive obligations on something called astamping ground. It was this stamping ground

(41:00):
that Butchner had discovered that I hadbeen fooled, no more thoroughly than several
generations of game wardens, hunters,naturalists, and explorers. Was a poor
sort of self for my injuries.So everybody just thought that animals made it
because they wanted to. He's justlike, yeah, all animals just mate

(41:21):
because they want to. And he'slike so he's like no. So it
turns out I'm just gonna tell you, this is my own words, what
happened. So it turns out whathe learned is that there's these they call
him stamping grounds, and it's like, think of it like an arena where
like these big football games take placeright or soccer games, and it's like

(41:45):
the Olympics, and whoever wins getsto mate with the females. So out
of the whole population, where there'syou know, what does he say,
like fifteen thousand or so there's whatdid he say? How many? Fifteen
hundred? I don't want to justquote that, jeez, I should look

(42:09):
back. Okay, out of thousandsof cob there are, there was only
about like eight stamping grounds, likeeight eight victors or so Bok knew of.
But none of the other males wouldmate with the females they would have

(42:30):
to they would have to fight.And even then, if a male owned
a territory, if he left forsome reason and left his territory alone,
as soon as he come back,there'd be another male cob there trying and
he have to fight him. Sothey wouldn't want to leave their territory.

(42:52):
Once they established a territory, theyjust stay with it because as soon as
you leave somebody. It's like withmy cat, he left and now there's
other cat came over and I didn'tknow. I was like, oh,
hi, Katy, let's all befriends and get along. It's like,
no, that could have ob couldhave been here for like a month watching
me with that other cat in thewindow. That could have deterred him from
coming out. If he saw thatother cat and then he sees another cat

(43:15):
down the street. I wish Iwould have known this, you know,
then I wouldn't have I mean,I'm glad, I'm glad I caught this
stray, but I would have setup something where he wasn't in our house,
or I would have hit him somewherein the house so that Obie wouldn't
have been able to see him inthe window. Because right after this cat
left and went back home. Itwas two nights later then I heard.

(43:37):
That's when I heard him. SoI mean, of course I'm speculating,
you know, but it's a coincidencefor sure. So when these female would
go into heat, they would comethrough the territory, and he described like

(44:00):
they're like these teenagers that are goingto the soda shop and you know,
just like prancing around and acting likethey don't care, but really they do,
and then just being coy and andthen it, you know, if
she comes it through his territory,she starts eating all the grass. Well,
he lets them eat the grass,like, all right, I got
him on my territory now. Andthen he goes over there and he's like,

(44:21):
all right, the only ones thatare coming here to the stamping grounds
there, they go there to havesex. That's the only reason why I
go there. So he just assumesshe wants to she's in she's she is
in heat. But then sometimes theydon't want a mate with them. They'll
just eat the grass. Well,he asked to take it. What's he
gonna do If he hurts her,then he's not gonna get anything. So

(44:43):
he lets her eat the grass andthen they move on to somebody else and
then they you know, they justuse him and eat the grass. But
when i'm females in heat, shecould she could have sex like fifteen times
a day, and so she couldbe like going around to all these different
and so and so he's watching thisand he's like, oh, I didn't
know that that's what they're doing.Like he just assumed that they had a

(45:07):
harem and it was all consensual kindof thing. So how do we draw
any comparison. I mean, firstof all, it's like it's not an
exact comparison. I mean people,people. I mean, when it comes

(45:27):
to polygamy, there could be somesome like reluctance to to look at that
in animals and say, oh,well the polygamy it works for them.
It helps them, you know,keep their population in better shape because you

(45:49):
get like the strongest male meeting withthe females. But I don't think that.
I mean what I'm just saying whatI think. I don't know.
I didn't really give this too muchthought, but I think the male and
the female both contribute to to toto the offspring. I mean, if

(46:10):
there is a solid like if there'slove, a baby that's born through love
seems to have better better chance ateverything then if it's not conceived in the
loving act. I don't know.I don't even want to get in this,

(46:32):
but it is, you know,I I know how it feels.
It's distasteful. It's like, oh, well, you got the females like
just using and being super horny foronly a small period of time, and
and then like the guys are caring. Really what they're what they're into is
resources. They're not really into thefemales so much, although it seems like

(46:53):
it, but they're into the resources, and the resources just attract the females.
I'm gonna end that here and letyou guys think about it, because
well, now you know what it'slike to confront a truth that it's not
really it's a little distasteful. Yougotta kind of think about it for a

(47:17):
little while, all right. Butbefore I end with this, I just
wanted to say this, only asuper cob lasts long on a central territory.
If he leaveses property for water andforge, he will return to find
it occupied and must fight to regainit. On his putting green, he
will continually be challenged by the ambitious, he says. The human male encountering

(47:44):
a stamping ground for the first timecannot fail to identify himself with the contestants
before him, and despite his mostsecret dreams of sex and riot, he
will think a mercifully merciful evolutionary destinythat made him a man and not a
Uganda cob. It is all justa bit too much trouble. The human
female, on the other hand,will have a response quite different. Identifying

(48:07):
herself with a dough, she willbe embarrassed for all her femininity. Yeah,
I think you know that's safe tosay. That's true. All right,
thank you for being here with metoday on Brainbow. I'm gonna end
this. I'm gonna end this episodewith a song by Owen Courtz. It's
called Your Spring. It's the beautyof the mountain, when the snow melts

(48:36):
in to gree It's the smiles ofthe village. Bea welcoming me. You
know. Sometimes we have the answersfear as the summer breathe. Sometimes it's

(49:04):
a horizon and that best a mystery. Carry me hold on the wings of
an angel. You'll ever know.I can tell you that. Now I

(49:34):
can tell you that now I cantell you that now