Squirrely- skittish but friendly, and a little bit nutty. 🐿️
Squirrels are the least territorial animal I've seen in the forest so far.
They don't fight and argue like crows but instead they wait their turn after all the other birds have had their fill of nuts before politely skurrying out to be fed.
They forage skittishly and keep to themselves sort of like hermits. I've never seen squirrels fight unless they are mating, but who knows about their secret drama…
Each species displays a unique set of territorial behaviors that can best be summed up in one word: DRAMA.
People put up fences, cats lay down oozing confidence ad they sprawl out to declare their turf, and squirrels occupy trees. I've never seen more than one squirrel family per tree.
Same with raccoons- only one family per tree. Makes me wonder if it's unnatural for people to dwell so closely together…
Not owning territory (or feeling at home enough to call something your own) seems to cause a great deal of anxiety amongst members of our species. Family feuds are drama.
How many of us claim at least one acre of land?
I think one acre is the the minimum that we need in order to be chill and less full of drama. Residing on and cultivating land makes us feel most content and less squirrely.
We can sprawl out on an acre safely and securely with all that room to roam in privacy.
What happens to people when you take their territory away or they were born in psychic displacement?
The term “Deterritorialism” was coined by Robert Ardrey in the book “The Territorial Imperative” which was written in 1966.
Deterritorialism, he posits, is the root of all social disorders and complex PTSD. Of course C-PTSD was not yet an identified psychological concept back when he wrote about it, yet he describes exactly that in this book I review on Brainbow’s latest podcast.
The homing instinct is the elephant in the room of the territorial imperative- the thing that drives animals (including humans) to migrate and search for territory that they can give birth in so that their offspring will inherit the good earth and continue their existence until the end of time.
I invite you to join me in this exploration of the homing instinct and territorialism behaviors.
We are always being told to stay in our own lane and to not trespass.
Such fine etiquette and basic morality suits everyone equally well.
The territorialism instinct actually protects the group from the property owner more so than it protects the property owner from the group.
Who has more power? The owner or the outsider who has no ownership rights?
This is why there's a constant battle over territory, whether it's in academia, work, nation against nation, ect.,
How do we overcome our animal instincts and should we?
Is territorialism such a bad thing?