The Territorial Imperative

A Personal Investigation into Animal Origins of Property and Nations.

Reading from the science naturalist and playwright Robert Ardrey's book, "The Territorial Imperative"

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
You know, sometimes we have theanswers fear as the summer, and sometimes
it's a horizon and that best ofmystery. Hello and welcome back to Brainbow.

(00:27):
So today on the podcast, we'regonna be continuing reading from The Territorial
Imperative by Robert Ardrey. And Iwas just playing Owen Courts your Spring.
I made a video for my cat. I still he you know what I

(00:48):
I still haven't gotten him back yet. And this whole journey of me looking
for him. He was displaced ina creek over the on June first,
and all over the summer fourth ofJuly and heat went and he was all
by himself. And it wasn't untila month that after he's been he has
been there that I had a sightingof him and it went viral because people

(01:08):
thought he was a bobcat in thecreek. And so then I went there
with my you know, had tofigure everything out and I was reading cat
all Bright thests and she's like probablyprobably like the most renowned cat expert that
looks for or that searches for displacedcats. She was a police canine detective,

(01:32):
I mean a police detective. Andthen she you know, was in
the Canine Union and she trained caninedogs and they were basically like you know,
she worked for the Canine Union,so she's really good with animals,
and she had to figure everything outwith cats. And she was doing this
in the nineties. I don't knowwhy I have not heard about the you

(01:55):
know, the the animal behavior ofcats. I just I was clueless and
I freaking I think I thought Iknew a lot about cats, but I
didn't know about them reverting back intolike a feral state or a wild state,
whatever you want to call it,and and their brain just changes like
it's it's very extreme when they areput into a wild life area, how

(02:19):
much they could just almost like mutateback into wild cats like smarter than foxes
because they have the the they havethe instincts of that come with learning how
to be domesticated because you know,they're they're they're not they're raised by humans,
of course, and so they knowhow to live around humans. But

(02:43):
I've observed them, and I'm notsaying I'm an ex right, I mean,
I literally spend like four months doingthis, so I'm sure there's a
lot more to learn, but Iknow about this specific area by the creek
and these animals by the creek,and so raccoons have their territory and they
are much more not friendly, butnot fearful of humans. So the raccoons

(03:07):
would they wouldn't shy away from me, but they would not trust me,
and they would watch me from adistance and they would see what I'm doing,
and then they'd go eat the foodafterward, you know, I find
them on the trail camera. Theybut they would they would not be as
aggressive as the local cats. Soit was like the local cats, the
indoor outdoor cats around there, theywould have an advantage over the wildlife because

(03:32):
there's like a it's like their hometerritory, as we've been talking about in
this book, Like what is thatlike what is that home advantage? And
Robert Ardrey calls it moral, likea moral instinct. It's like the it's
like the instinct that gives us,gives rise to our idea of justice,
our sense of justice and fairness.If you own something, it's yours,

(03:58):
it's your property. Other people aren'tsupposed to take it from you. And
so the cats have a higher socialadvantage over the raccoons. But there there
wasn't there was one backyard I wentinto. Now, the neighbor told me
that raccoons were born in this likeall along this creek there there are it's

(04:18):
like it's human waste goes through.Its disgusting. It like if you're walking
on the trail, you'd smell likepoop every now and then. So it's
like the human rate waste. Itgoes into the runoff and it collects into
these like drainage ditches and there's theselike huge like not tubes. So what
are they called like sewers, butI don't know. It's it's so anyways,

(04:40):
the water runs out of these things, and it's one gross thing is
like down the street there's this partcalled Kleinline and everyone's like takes their kids,
there's go swimming. I don't understand. It smells like it smells like
human waste. I don't know howsafe it is to be doing that.
I guess people do it all thetime. Like look at what is that
river in India where they throw deadbodies and they do all sorts of and

(05:01):
people bathe in there when they havebaptisms in there, and it seems to
be okay. So maybe I'm justlike grossed out by all of that.
But anyways, so we have thesedrainage runoff areas that go into the creek
and it flows out eventually to theriver, and the rivers take everything to
the ocean and everything's connected that way. So this particular creek is about two

(05:24):
miles away where the drop off pointis where everybody goes. It's very popular
area. People take their bikes there. It's beautiful. They got a nice
trail except for the poopy smell.But anyways, people don't seem to care
about it. It's not a placewhere like a cat would be like,
Hey, I'm gonna go check outthis like logo trail and swimming hole where
all the coyotes are. No,a cat's not going to run away there.

(05:45):
But for some reason, all ofmy neighbors and everyone I talk to
seems to have this idea that,oh, yeah, it's perfectly normal that
a cat would walk two miles awayto freaking coyote territory. Well, you
hear them every night by the waywhere it smells human poop and everybody's walking.
You never see a cat there.Even the cats that live there don't
go by the trail. They don'twant have anything to do with bicycles and

(06:06):
people like going back and forth andcoyotes and stuff like, they don't want
anything to do with that. Mycat definitely didn't want like a senior cat
neuter. No, he was.He was lazier than I am. The
guy slept all the time by theside of the house. And plus the
neighbor came by and told me thathe took my cat. So it's like,
I don't know, I feel likein some freaking Twilight Zone terrorists,

(06:28):
you know show where it's like Igot like some creepy person I you know,
like your cat's dead, he's ina coyote belley and then like everyone's
laughing about it. But no onebelieves me that, like they think my
cat just like walked over there byhimself. So anyways, okay, I'm
learning about cat behavior, terrorists,growers, and blah bah blah. All
my ideas about cats have been justlike turned upside down. A lot of

(06:49):
it had to do with you know, Loretto Gratziana Brunning. Now you know,
I talked about her before. Shehas the Inn Mammal Institute. She's
kind of like a natural science savant. I don't know, she she just
knows this stuff does. She didn'tgo to school for it. She reads
on her own. And she learnedall this by being working in a zoo

(07:12):
or volunteering at a zoo and justbeing a you know, scientist is really
a good observer. They could justsee things for what they are, you
know. So she told me aboutthis book, and so as I'm searching
for my cat, I run intocat Albright Theson, who you know,
is the canine pet detective. Hatesaying pet detective. It sounds so sounds
so trite. It's it's actually,you know, serious thing. When people

(07:34):
lose their pets, you know,they go through a morning process and it's
it's very hard, especially you knowwhen you know your cat's out there and
you know that he's suffering. Youknow, people have an intuitive connection with
their cats and their dogs too,but a dog every species is going to
is going to act differently when it'swhen it's displaced, including humans. When

(07:59):
humans are displaced. Think about migrantsor people that have to flee their country
because of wars and stuff they gothrough, and even just moving. Moving
is one of the number one stressorsin life, just moving. But if
you've you know, if you've beenpushed out violently and traumatically, then yeah,
it's going to change your It's goingto have genetic changes in you.

(08:20):
And your children are going to beaffected by these genetic changes as well.
We've seen they call it Ulysses syndromeor migrant syndrome, and it's the cause
of a lot of different psychiatric problemsfrom depression, addiction disorders, bipolar schizophrenia,
psychosis, all sorts of PTSD,major PTSD, from migration. And

(08:45):
I'm thinking about all these migrants we'rehaving here in our country right now,
and they're going to be dealing witha whole mess of you know, identity
issues and financial issues. They don'town any land. An animal, every
animal needs to feel like it ownssomething, or that it belongs to something,
or that it's somewhere where it's safe. They will work put all of

(09:11):
their energy into making a safe placefor themselves. So that's why, like
when it casts is displaced, itcould literally sit underneath a deck, not
eat or drink for a week ortwo because it feels like, Okay,
I know this is safe, andI don't want to go venture out and
do anything because I'm in survival mode, and all I want to do is
survive. So cats are an extremeexample of the adaptability of what happens in

(09:35):
survival mode. They're kind of likethe frogs of psychology, who just like
have major changes. Dogs, onthe other hand, if you take them
and you drive them somewhere. Ihad a dog where you know that my
parents drove. I think it wasabout fifteen miles away. It was pretty
far away. The dog returned tome and I didn't even you know,
like I was a little kid.It wasn't like I was treating it like

(09:56):
the way I treat my cat.My cat was like a king of the
garden. But my dog just likethe stray dog that I picked up,
and he came back to me.And so dogs have a homing instinct as
well. But if they feel like, you know, it's too dangerous to
return, they're not going to return. Depending on how they got there,
Like if they were just gently pickedup and dropped off, yeah, they'll
return back home. But if theywere tried, if someone tried to kill

(10:20):
them and then they survived that,or if they threw them in water.
A cat, if they threw acat in water, it's going to have
a majorly hard time getting back home. Same thing with soldiers with PTSD.
It's like some of them never returnhome. Even when they're home, they're
not home. Their minds are someplaceelse. It's like, you know,

(10:41):
I'm going on too much about this. I caught this cat. I told
you guys this already. He's therefor four months at the creek, and
like I said, it's a runningjoke over there that if a cat's been
gone longer than two weeks, acoyote ated. So they don't look for
me. And just about everybody therehas lost at least one cat, and
so they just thought I was absolutelycrazy for looking for my cat Atlung and
I had, and a lot ofpeople didn't believe me, and I had

(11:03):
to tell him I have him ontrail camera. I saw him with my
eyes. They're probably thinking, oh, she's just like wishful thinking, I
don't really believe her. She couldbe lying, you know. It's not
like I pulled out my you know, my disk and showed him the pictures.
So but a lot of people didbelieve me, and they let me
in their backyards. You know,they let me use their backyards just to

(11:24):
set up feeding stations and trail cameras, and that's how I got all this
information that I got. So let'ssee, without further ado, let's get
on with the show, right TheTerritorial Imperative by Robert Ardrie. He says,
it's entirely normal that when an astonishinglynew idea comes off somebody's mental assembly

(11:46):
line, it will take a whilebefore other people's assembly lines tool up sufficiently
to deal with it. Well,yeah, I mean that's I love.
I love how he talks, soyou know, it's like so so,
and it just makes me feel goodto read some of his quotes, because
when you're the person who has thisidea first, and I'm not the first

(12:09):
person to have this, you know, like I said, Cat Albright,
she had this. She started figuringthis out in the nineties with a group
of volunteers who were doing search andcat doing search and rescue missions for cats,
with much resistance and ridicule from peoplein the shelters. They're like,
what are you doing, Like whyare you using traps to try to catch

(12:30):
a cat? If a cat doesn'twant to come to you, you know,
like leave it alone. And theydid not believe her. Imagine this
in the nineteen nineties trying to explain. You know, now we're twenty twenty
four and we have evidence that thisis true, and people are still reluctant
to believe it. The few peoplethat I encountered that were very reluctant to

(12:50):
believe it, it wasn't because theywere evil or anything, and it wasn't
because they were stupid. It wasbecause there's some unknown sy logical phenomenon where
once you believe something to be afact, like it's a truism, and
it's without question, they will deludethemselves before they accept new facts to change

(13:13):
their worldview because so much has alreadyhappened that they base their maybe you know,
like this one lady, she stoppedlooking for a cat after two weeks.
She figured he was dead, andthen I come across. I'm like,
oh, he probably wasn't dead.He's probably you know, and she
doesn't want to have to deal withthat, and so she gets mad at
me. And and that's shadow projection, where it's like, instead of dealing

(13:35):
with your own stuff, you putit on somebody else and blame them for
upsetting you. Okay, Another thing, another lady who was she was like
a cat rescuer and she and soyou know how they they they take strays

(13:56):
and they spay and neuter them hereinstead of just you know, euthanizing them,
instead of just you know, sencingthem to death. They give him
a shot and they're like, okay, now you're a community cat. They
tip their ear, they clip theirair a little bit, they say a
new terroom. They send them out. I'm sure that's very traumatic for the
cat too, to you know,get picked up, taken to a shelter,

(14:16):
all this stuff happens, and thengets thrown back out. It's like
that would be like very difficult toreturn home after something like that. And
then on top of it, youknow, she's dealing with feral cats,
throwing potentially people's cats that have beendisplaced, putting them into feral colonies because
they act like they're fair. Ididn't understand why she was so mad at

(14:37):
me about it. I'm like,what are you talking about? Like all
I'm saying, all I'm saying islike my cat is not acting the way
he is, Like he never actedlike this. He was never fearful,
afraid to come to me. Henever you know, would like not even
eat food. He was never nocturnal, you know, nothing like that.
And so something happened. Who wasa major I saw. It was a

(14:58):
major sh to my cat. Andshe's she's like, no, your cat,
he's just scared. I'm like,no, it's beyond scared. He's
not behaving. He's behaving like awild animal at night. Like, that's
not my cat. And you couldsee he's not eating food, so he's
eating something. He's probably eating mice. That's not my cat either. My
cat. I fed him at leastten times a day. Now. The

(15:20):
reason why I fed him ten timesa day is because if he put a
bunch of food out, he wasgetting to the you know, he's getting
to be an older guy and he'dlike to eat a lot, and he
would eat until he became he waspre diabetic. I was like, I
got to put him on a diet. So I just, you know,
the vet told me, just givehim a little bit of food, expensive
food too, so that you're nottempted to like, you know, feed

(15:41):
him as much as he wants andyou know, not not expensive food,
but like give him. Maybe thereis something to that, because when you're
feeding your cat expensive food, youdon't want to just like dump out a
bunch of like a whole Petei platterof it. You're more conservative with it.
And so that's probably why he toldme to get him something like,
you know, the tiki cat stuff, which my cat didn't like. My

(16:03):
cat didn't really care for the healthfood is he likes temptation catnet treats.
That's like all he wants to eat. And so yeah, he got like
obese over the holidays because I boughthim all these treats and he just kept
beating them. So then I hadto like back off. And it became
like a ritual, you know,like cats have this, the ritual animals.

(16:25):
It's like, Okay, I'm inthe house, feed me, feed
him, go back out. I'min the house. Can he come in?
And just as soon as he comesin, I gotta feed him.
And so how did he go fromthat to like I put food out the
feeding stations. I see him atthe feeding station, he's not eating it.
He's like hmm, this smell's familiar, and he smells it. And
when he saw us there, that'swhat he did. He kind of smelled
us and then he like we're definitelyrecognizes because he was walking around following us.

(16:52):
But so yeah, I was tellingthis lady that, and she's like
didn't even believe. I mean,she she believed that somebody took my cat
because cats don't just walk one anda half two miles away. They don't
run away like dogs do, especially, you know, like it maybe if
a cat is like a farm cat, it has a longer roaming distance.

(17:14):
But cats and neighborhoods typically just likestay. They try to take over a
whole block. If they can,they'll take over a but you know,
more than two blocks, no catswhen there's you know, when there's like
twenty five houses on you know,like around a whole block, that cats
they can't take more area than that, that's just it's too much. So

(17:37):
but if they live on a farmshirt then you know they'll probably roam from
one end to the other. Ifit's like a city, they may only
stay within a couple of houses.You know, So it all depends on
how populated is. The more catsthere are, the more competition they see
it as if they're not going tofight with like one hundred cats to get
to a busy walking trail where there'spoop in the creek. I was like

(18:00):
human waste and there's just a bunchof humans there no, but everyone seems
to believe that. And so it'slike I can only imagine what Cat Albright
had to go through her being anexpert police dog trainer where it automatically gives
her more credibility, and she wasdoing this as a living, searching for
people's pets with dogs without hound dogs, bloodhounds, you know. So it's

(18:26):
like, come on, people,we need to figure this stuff out,
because the first of all, shouldn'tbe legal, Like it shouldn't be,
you know, legal to take someone'scat and dump them in the creek.
It's like, technically you didn't killthem, but still, like, you
know, you shouldn't be allowed todo things like that, and the ramifications

(18:47):
of what happens afterward, like it'straumatic. It's like these were my children,
had my cat since they were fourand six years old. So I
I really hope that there are somenew laws put in place. But first
we have to understand the amount ofstress that this puts on a cat.
And it's cruel. It's very cruel. It's not just like people think of

(19:11):
that they're like a dog, Oh, they just throw out on an adventure.
That's what I thought at first too. I thought, well, my
cat's on on vacation or something.He likes being outside. No, no,
no, he likes being outside,but he likes being on the side
of the house or in the backwhere he knows his territory. So when
he did come back, I heardhim. It was saddest sound I heard
at night, right before I wentto sleep, sad at sound I ever
heard a cat. Make. Itsound like he was in a tree,

(19:33):
and it was definitely him, buthe had like a really like sore,
scratchy throat. So I run outthere and then I hear it again,
but it's like in a different location. It was foggy and dark that night.
Then I don't hear anything. Thenten minutes later I hear it in
another so he's like he can movewithout being seen or heard, and it

(19:55):
was like he's watching me. Sothen I'm thinking, for sure, Okay,
the only thing I could do,I might blow it. I cannot
chance it. If he made itthis far, then he's here, you
know. So so you know,I heard him about four times or so,
and then I go back in thehouse. And then I go back

(20:18):
in bed and I leave the windowopen and put food out, and then
I hear I hear a bang onthe door, a bang on the window,
a hiss how and like he wasin attack, Moti. It was
like the other cat I found whenI first caught him, sounded like a
wild cat. So then a coupledays ago in my backyard there's a dead

(20:42):
rat. Now, my cat usedto bring me dead animals sometimes, so
I'm thinking that he did it.I can't think of anybody else who do
that, except for maybe if aneighbor through a dead rat in my yard
that would be but that it's like, okay, that's I'm thinking it's my

(21:03):
cat that did it though. Soso if that's the case, then he's
around watching me. And it's weirdbecause I could feel okay, every time
I saw him when I was outlike and I'm talking about like where I
left and I and then he showedup on trail camera, so I know
he was watching me. Or theone day, the one night when I

(21:26):
was there and he was following me, me around, and then when I
heard him that night and I wasout there, I get this very strange
feeling of like super uncomfortable. It'slike Okay, you know, like the
sense of being stared at but amplifiedby like ten where it's like it's scary.

(21:48):
It's like there's a ghost watching youkind of feeling, and then I
just want to like hurry and getout of there. But then afterward I'm
like, shoot, I blew it. I blew it because I got scared,
and I was like, well it'sgonna be okay, Like I I
should have just stayed there. Ishould have just stayed. But anyways,
so there's that kind of that thingthat I learned. So when I you

(22:12):
know, hopefully hopefully I'll get anotherchance and I'll see them or send them
again, and then when I sendthem like that, I have to really
fight my instinct to leave because Ithink that this instinct is like the response
that animals have when they're faced withanother animal that owns territory. Okay,

(22:38):
it's like an outsider feeling. Doyou ever like go to go somewhere and
you're just like, I just don'tfeel comfortable here, like this is not
my territory. This is why likepeople that throw parties and good hosts is
they'll do what they can to makeyou feel comfortable because they know that everyone
feels that way, and they wantto make you feel you know, like
that's classy to try to make youfeel comfortable, and because they know that

(23:02):
you're not at home, and sothey go out of their way to do
that. But you know, didyou ever show up like somewhere where you
know you're not wanted, or maybeyou find yourself in some neighborhood where you
don't belong and it's just or ina forest. Yeah, this is where
I get that sense a lot.If you go out to the forest and
you're all by yourself and it startsto get dark, and you don't know

(23:27):
where you are really, and youcan feel like you're being watched. That
is the feeling I get when Obi. Every time Obi would show up,
I would get that feeling. Itwas like he's looking at me, being
aggressive to me because it's just inhis instinct to have territory. So he's

(23:48):
you know, all these animals aredoing this with each other, by the
way, and it's just instinctive.It's like, well, whoever could withstand
the fear and stand up for themselves? That's why, like you know,
Obi would just like there, hewouldn't fight, but he'd be like,
show no fear, and then theother cat would back down because the other
cat senses, well, if it'slike playing poker, it's like, I'm

(24:10):
not gonna bet against this guy.He looks like he could do something to
me if he wanted to, SoI'm just gonna But they could sense when
another cat's fearful. You can seethe posture changes. And so if you
ever watch two cats that are beingterritorial, you can look up stuff on
YouTube and find a lot of videoslike this where you know the cats say
like there's two cats in a neighborhoodand they're always trying to stretch out their

(24:34):
territory if they're unneutered males especially,and so they will the one that backs
down, who looks fearful, that'sthe one that loses. And so it's
kind of like a poker game betweenthem, like who's gonna stand up taller
for the longer time? Okay,oh gosh, I am I'm really like

(24:56):
only a third of the way throughthis book. It's it's one of those
books. Sorry about my dog barkinga lot right now. I don't know
why she's doing that. She's likestaring out the window barking at people.
I'm just gonna that's another thing.She's territorial. She's like, you know,
barking everybody get out of her,get out of her neighborhood. That's

(25:18):
why there's a lot to this territorialinstinct that we just accept as well.
Yeah, of course people are everyone'sterritorial, but it's like every species is
going to present territorialism differently. Solike with humans, we have status that

(25:41):
shows we own this, we havemoney, we have cars, we have
our houses and stuff like that.If a person doesn't own anything, then
they have to I'm sure that they'remade to feel a lot more vulnerable,
and that is something that's not evenaddressed by psychology at all, you know,
I think that should be something thatwe learn about. It's like,

(26:03):
well, okay, this person doesn'town any property and they have no sense
of belonging in the community they havemaybe they're displaced from their own country or
they have a different culture. Likeyeah, that's like you can't blame that
on You can't just say, wellthat you have a chemical imbalance, Like
no, there's a lot of youknow, like social economic factors that go

(26:25):
into place and just giving them aprescription pill is not going to fix all
of that, and so we reallyneed to have a whole paradigm shift.
And this is why I'm doing youknow, that's why I'm reading this,
and this is why I'm talking toyou. I'm just telling you about my
cats because it's this is like theway that I saw it firsthand, the

(26:48):
way that you know, these connectionsare being made in my mind that drew
me to trying to figure out moreabout this. So, okay, Robert
Ardrey says, is if what weare witnessing in essence is not the first
consequence of a tear deterritorializing of manto terror, de territorializing. Sorry,

(27:18):
I never heard that word before,de territorializing. So when we when when
people are being displaced and then westart to see that there's a breakdown,
they call it the use, callit the lonely crowd, and Pete,
there'll be more broken homes, delinquentkids, you know, people just being

(27:40):
wayward and mentally either mentally disordered ormentally deranged. We see a lot more
of that, and and he hesays that it could be because of deterritorializing
the man's territorial nature or is inherentend of evolutionary origin, is scarcely a

(28:03):
new thought. However, it's anignored one because when something is so obvious,
we just you know, we justignore. We're like, well,
yeah, that's it. We don'tlook at it. Like just like if
you if a person thinks, well, yeah, if a kak was missing
over here by the Coyote creek,and after two weeks if it's not there,
then it's dead. It's just likeyou just soon you just assume that

(28:25):
that's what's happening. Man considers ithis inherent right to own property, either
as an individual or as a memberof a group or both. Further,
he is ever ready to protect thatproperty against aggressors, even to the extent
at times of sacrificing his own life. That this behavioral pattern is not peculiar
to man, but is fundamentally characteristicsof animals in general has been shown for

(28:49):
diverse animal groups. If this istrue, if man has a territorial instinct,
then the aggression in man could besubdued by having him own property.
Think about like, when people didn'town property, how would they claim territory?

(29:11):
Maybe they would, you know,move around a lot more because but
then when you when you put themin like a smaller area and say,
Okay, this is your place,this is your place. And Robert Rodger
said that it's not because like there'sthis instinct to like, it's not so
much as an instinct to take over, although there's something about that that's in

(29:32):
there too, But mostly it's aboutprotecting the other individuals, protecting the group
from the individual that owns the property. So when an animal is confined to
its territory, it poses less ofa threat on everybody else because that's where
it's where it belongs. And I'msorry that I repeat myself twenty times.
I don't know if this is yourfirst time here, but I I you

(29:52):
know, I talked about this buttercupdog in India before with this man who
actually his wife was a German spyand she they met in Germany. He
tracked us down. He's like,I gotta tell you this. I gotta
tell you this. Okay. He'slike, they subdued the Indian male and

(30:15):
they've taken away all of his powerand strength and made him weak and submissive
to the English Empire. And I'mlike, okay, all right, yeah,
all right, okay, I believeyou, but I didn't really understand
it, and so I was like, now, looking back, I'm like,
well, that's how you take overa country, That's how you take
over a culture. That's how youdominate others, is you you disempower them

(30:38):
so that they don't have property,so that they don't even they can't even
listen to their own instinct to acquireproperty. Now, in this book he
talks about some other animals. Whatsome other mammals. What he found is
that they don't compete for females likebirds and you know other animals. They

(31:00):
don't compete for female They don't.They don't compete for females like they've been
you know a lot. It's acommon common shut up, Rosie, she
just she won't stop barking. Okay, it's a common misconception that animals fight
for females. They don't. Andthey don't rape either. But that's like

(31:22):
a moral thing with animals. Theydon't rape. They don't the a lot
of like mammals, they won't haveincests. My cat, for example,
when he had when he was onlykitten, and his mother nursed him for
six months. Now at a certainpoint during this time, he started getting
sexually interested in her because she wasn'tfixed yet and and he was coming of

(31:48):
age, and so she was thesweetest cat. She was the most loving,
best mother cat ever. Six monthsshe nursed him. But then when
he started that, it was like, oh, she really like had to
push him away, and it wassad watching it. So I had to
get him neoted right away. Butthen when watching that was like, oh,
they have like a sexual taboo incestthing. And so I don't know

(32:10):
if you want to call it moralityor whatever you want to call it,
but that that is in place too, so with animals. With this dog,
Buttercup, and they get back thereButtercups, this old dog no teeth,
and this man who is married tothis German spy lady. He was
being followed around by a pack ofwild dogs. They were probably like six

(32:31):
to ten of them, I don'teven remember, but there's a big pack
of them all trailing behind, following. They follow wherever you go, and
whenever he'd walk to the store,they'd follow him. And so we're all
walking around and you know, thedogs are following, and you know,
we come to my block and buttercupsthere. Buttercup owns the whole block,

(32:51):
and this big pack of dogs.They would you know, they wouldn't go
down her block and over his boyor girl. But anyways, Buttercup is
barking them and they listen, They'relike, Okay, I'm gonna stay,
I'm gonna back away from you.They wouldn't go over there because they knew
there's not a lot of dogs thereby Why by the way, because not
a lot of people own dogs.And you know gregon Or that's like by

(33:15):
Deli a lot. It's kind oflike maybe a very rich thing to do.
And there's a lot of dogs thatare just like on the street and
they think that they're maybe they thinkthey're dirty or something. It's just not
it's not really a cultural thing forthem to have indoor pets like that.
So yeah, and I was thinkingat the time, I thought, oh,

(33:37):
they have a sense of justice,a fairness, a type of morality.
Well call it what I want.It's a territorial instinct really. So
another thing that you know he talkedabout was, you know, we all
have this misconception, right is sorryto make that generalization. Maybe you don't,
but a lot of people do whenyou know, growing up with this,

(33:58):
I believe that birds, male birdswere beautiful to attract female birds.
No, that's not the case either. Now it the males that fight are
fighting over territory, they're not fightingover females, And of course females are
the reward, but it's not ashoeing. So for example, let's say

(34:19):
you have these like these two bucksand they're fighting and the one gets the
territory, the other one leaves.Well, the females come by and they
don't have to have sex with themif they don't want to, they'll come
by, they'll eat their food,and the male will not never rape because
it's it's either called morality or it'san evolutionary pattern where the animal selects the

(34:46):
ones that are the elite. Andit seems ridiculous, right, It's like,
but there's there's some kind of beneficialthere's some kind there's something beneficial about
them only mating with the elite.And so you'd get a handful of males

(35:10):
that are having sex. You know, you think that, well, wouldn't
that cause a lot of like inbreeding? If you got like everyone has like
the same father, you got fivedifferent fathers for your whole population. Apparently
it doesn't. It seems to increasethe odds of survival then decrease it.

(35:35):
So I think there needs to besome studies and that too, because there
are another another just like misconception ormaybe it's not, is that genetics when
they're too closely related, you know, everyone has the same father that inbreeding
occurs and then it ruins the Idon't mean, maybe that's not even true,
you know, I don't know it'sI mean, it's something that I

(35:55):
always thought was true. But Ialso thought that that animals compete it for
females, but it's not. Theyhad their instinct is to compete for resources,
and so I don't want to anthropomorphosizethis may not even you know,
just because it's it's like, it'strue for animals doesn't mean it's true for
people, because every species has differentrules of territorial instincts. But let's just

(36:19):
take let's just pose the question.What if what if men aren't so much
driven to be with be with women, but that they compete with each other
to acquire resources so that they couldbe in the elite, and they're all

(36:40):
striving to be elite well, whatdoes it take to be elite? We
have to have the support of othermales, and we see that with animals
too. There would be like agroup of you know, atta boys around
an alpha and they don't really understandwhy, what would be the what's purpose
with this serve? Except for maybeyour next in line if this guy dies.

(37:02):
So if you're like best friends withthe alpha, eventually alpha's gonna have
to go. I mean, theylive a hard life because there's a lot
of stress and everyone's trying to takethem down. So then you got their
buddies. They're one of their buddiesis probably going to be next in line,
and so that's why they they fightfor the alpha to keep all the
other ones away. So the femaleswill have a pick of just a handful

(37:29):
of these elite alphas and the otherones they have to just accept that they're
not getting anything even if they arean elite. And if the female chooses
not to, she's just like,eh, I'm gonna go with this guy.
She could mate like five times inone day when she's only when she's
in heat. Really she's not doingit all the time. But the male

(37:50):
just sits around just waits. It'sinteresting because what why why are humans the
only ones at rape? And whatdid that do to our species? The
raping and wars and stuff like theyhad to have caused some kind of degenerative
something. It can't be good togo against our instincts that have been here

(38:12):
for you know, millions of years, to our ancestor, that allowed our
ancestors to you know, to besuccessful. And then all of a sudden,
it's like, well, now wecould be like really corrupt and just
like take stuff and just there's nomore morality, there's no more territorial rights,
there's no more sense of instinctive justice. Now, it's just like you

(38:35):
get like a handful of jackals thatcould just do whatever they want, and
it's I'm not sure. I'm noteven sure what's going to happen after that.
It just seems like it could bewhy our species is so gung ho
about self destruction and destroying each otherand having wars and just like I don't

(38:58):
know heading in the world direction.I don't want to be a doomer,
but you know, like I can'tI don't understand the wars, Like why
would we do things like that's sickto kill people. It's sick to kill
children, it's sick all of that. Like you don't need all that land
and stuff, you know, likethere has to be a more creative solution

(39:21):
to all of this. But youknow, the territorial instinct is in humans
as well, and so when peopleare fighting for territory, well, you
know, if you let them takeover, some people will just take over.
And then it's like, yeah,you can't have that either. And
now I think the only way toreally fix this is through education so that

(39:45):
we could see our instincts for whatthey are instead of denying them and saying,
oh, well, only animals haveinstinct Humans don't have instincts because if
we don't address them, if wedon't like deal with our shadow nature,
then it's going to rule over us. Okay, so let me just scroll

(40:07):
through this. I feel like I'mmissing something before I leave, because I
think I'm gonna just like end thishere. There's a lot to think about
with that, because now you know, we're dealing with like nations and war
and man, this isn't just aboutcat cats in their territory anymore, but
it's about it's about like I guessPTSD. How how does this How does

(40:30):
territorialism affect our psychology? How doesit affect the way we the way we
treat each other? And how doesit drive our motivations and you know,
basically give us meaning? And yeah, I think there's a lot a lot

(40:53):
to be addressed here with psychology.So I'm gonna, you know, leave
it here once again. This wasthe Territorial Imperative by Robert Ardrey. Thank
you so much for being here withme. I'm Brainbow and I hope to
see you next time. I'm gonnaprobably post another video within this week after

(41:14):
I do some more thinking and readingand philosophizing and meditating. All right,
thank you guys for being here,and I hope to see you next time.