|
Whatever the advantage that an individual animal or a particular animal society may gain from the powerful territorial drive, it is evident that chances for survival are bettered. And natural selection, as blind as a cave fish concerning ultimate purposes yet as shrewd as a cat concerning the moment’s situation, lays the long finger of survival on those in whom the drive runs strongest and the thumb of death on the remainder. So an instinct flowers. The world of the animal is a world full of fear. There is an old saying that in a state of nature the object of existence is to obtain one’s dinner without providing someone else with his. In such a world the creature who has established a trusted territory has made himself a trustworthy ally. The alliance may benefit him in any of numerous ways, determined by the particular problems, which afflict his species; it may guarantee his food supply; it may shelter his young; it may give him an edge on the leopard that inflicts delirium on his nights. Or territory may give him status in the eyes of the female, a creature necessarily dedicated to the long view of things; and so he may gain a better mate and more worthy young.
The main idea of the passage is:
|
