DISTANCE REGULATION IN ANIMALS

DISTANCE REGULATION IN ANIMALS

Comparative studies of animals help to show how man’s space requirements are influenced by his environment. In animals we can observe the direction, the rate, and the extent of changes in behaviour that follow changes in space available to them as we can never hope to do in men. For one thing, by using animals it is possible to accelerate time, since animal generations are relatively short. A scientist can, in forty years, observe four hundred and forty generations of mice, while he has in the same span of time seen only two generations of his own kind. And, of course, he can be more detached about the fate of animals.

In addition, animals don’t rationalise their behaviour and thus obscure issues. In their natural state, they respond in an amazingly consistent manner so that it is possible to observe repeated and virtually identical performances. By restricting our observations to the way animals handle space, it is possible to learn an amazing amount that is translatable to human terms.

Territoriality, a basic concept in the study of animal behaviour, is usually defined as behaviour by which an organism characteristically lays claim to an area and defends it against members of its own species. It is a recent concept, first described by the English ornithologist H. B. Howard in his Territory in Bird Life, written in 1920. Howard stated the concept in some detail, though naturalists as far back as the seventeenth century had taken note of various events which Howard recognised as manifestations of territoriality.

Territoriality studies are already revising many of our basic ideas of animal life and human life as well. The expression “free as a bird” is an encapsulated form of man’s conception of his relation to nature. He sees animals as free to roam the world, while he himself is imprisoned by society. Studies of territoriality show that the reverse is closer to the truth and that animals are often imprisoned in their own territories. It is doubtful if Freud, had he known what is known today about the relation of animals to space, could have attributed man’s advances to trapped energy redirected by culturally imposed inhibitions.

Many important functions are expressed in territoriality, and new ones are constantly being discovered. H. Hediger, Zurich’s famous animal psychologist, described the most important aspects of territoriality and explained succinctly the mechanisms by which it operates. Territoriality, he says, insures the propagation of the species by regulating density. It provides a frame in which things are done – places to learn, places to play, safe places to hide. Thus it coordinates the activities of the group and holds the group together. It keeps animals within communicating distance of each other, so that the presence of food or an enemy can be signalled. An animal with a territory of its own can develop an inventory of reflex responses to terrain features. When danger strikes, the animal on its home ground can take advantage of automatic responses rather than having to take time to think about where to hide.

The psychologist C. R. Carpenter, who pioneered in the observation of monkeys in a native setting, listed thirty-two functions of territoriality, including important ones relating to the protection and evolution of the species. The list that follows is not complete, nor is it representative of all species, but it indicates the crucial nature of territoriality as a behavioural system, a system that evolved in very much the same way as anatomical systems evolved. In fact, differences in territoriality have become so widely recognised that they are used as a basis for distinguishing between species, much as anatomical features are used.

Territoriality offers protection from predators, and also exposes to predation the unfit who are too weak to establish and defend a territory. Thus, it reinforces dominance in selective breeding because the less dominant animals are less likely to establish territories. On the other hand territoriality facilitates breeding by providing a home base that is safe. It aids in protecting the nests and the young in them. In some species it localises waste disposal and inhibits or prevents parasites. Yet one of the most important functions of territoriality is proper spacing, which protects against over-exploitation of that part of the environment on which a species depends for its living.

In addition to preservation of the species and the environment, personal and social functions are associated with territoriality. C. R. Carpenter tested the relative roles of sexual vigour and dominance in a territorial context and found that even a desexed pigeon will in its own territory regularly win a test encounter with a normal male, even though desexing usually results in loss of position in a social hierarchy. Thus, while dominant animals determine the general direction in which the species develops, the fact that the subordinate can win (and so breed) on his home grounds helps to preserve plasticity in the species by increasing variety and thus preventing the dominant animals from freezing the direction which evolution takes.

Territoriality is also associated with status. A series of experiments by the British ornithologist A. D. Bain on the great tit altered and even reversed dominance relationships by shifting the position of feeding stations in relation to birds living in adjacent areas. As the feeding station was placed closer and closer to a bird’s home range, the bird would accrue advantages it lacked when away from its own home ground.

Man, too, has territoriality and he has invented many ways of defending what he considers his own land, turf, or spread. The removal of boundary markers and trespass upon the property of another man are punishable acts in much of the Western world. A man’s home has been his castle in English common law for centuries, and it is protected by prohibitions on unlawful search and seizure even by officials of his government. The distinction is carefully made between private property, which is the territory of an individual, and public property, which is the territory of the group.

This cursory review of the functions of territoriality should suffice to establish the fact that it is a basic behavioural system characteristic of living organisms including man.

Excerpt from “The Autonomous House – design and planning for self-sufficiency” by Brenda and Robert Vale.The autonomous house on its site is defined as a house operating independently of any inputs except those of its immediate environment. The house is not linked to the mains services of gas, water, electricity or drainage, but instead uses the income-energy sources of sun, wind and rain to service itself and process its own wastes. In some ways it resembles a land-based space station which is designed to provide an environment suitable for life but unconnected with the existing life-support structure of Earth. The autonomous house uses the life-giving properties of the Earth but in so doing provides an environment for the occupants without interfering with or altering these properties.

Although the self-serviced house provides a useful starting-point for experiments in autonomy, as it forms a small unit that can be designed, built and tested within a relatively short time, the idea can be expanded to include self-sufficiency in food, the use of on-site materials for building and the reduction of the building and servicing technology to a level where the techniques can be understood and equipment repaired by a person without recourse to specialized training. Although it is possible to survive with pre-industrial technology, this is not what is proposed by autonomous living. At present, however, technology appears to be exploited for its own sake, without thought to its benefits, uses or effects on people or the external environment. We are persuaded to expect a higher material standard of living when, for the majority, the standard that we already have in the West is perfectly adequate. A marginal increase in this standard can only be made with the use of yet greater quantities of the existing resources of the Earth. What are essentials for the American way of life (full central heating, air conditioning, a car per person) are considered, albeit less so now, as luxuries for Europeans, and what are considered necessary for a satisfactory European life (enough to eat, a home and fuel to heat it, access to transport) would be luxuries for the ‘third world’. If We cannot find a way of levelling standards rationally while there is time left to consider the problem, then the levelling may be forced on us as the lack of fossil fuels on which western economy so critically depends precipitates a collapse which must change our way of living if we are to survive at all.

The autonomous house is not seen as a regressive step. It is not simply a romantic vision of ‘back to the land’, with life again assuming a rural pace and every man dependent upon himself and his immediate environment for survival. Rather, it is a different direction for society to take. Instead of growth, stability is the aim; instead of working to earn money to pay other people to keep him alive, the individual is presented with the choice of self-autonomy or working to pay for survival. No such choice exists at present. ‘Dropping out’ now is a game for those with private means.

Stability would be an obvious goal were it not for the fact that society is so geared to growth in every sense. A stable population, making only what it actually needs, with each article being considered with regard to the material it is made of and what is to be done with it once its useful life is over, and finding all its power from what can be grown or from the sun, would give man back a true place in the world’s system. However, a consumer society can exist only by living off the capital resources of the Earth, whether the stored fuels or the reserves of oxygen for running the machinery of the growth economy; and, as has frequently been shown, these reserves are not infinite. The oil shortage in 1974 gave a taste of enforced ‘no growth’ economy, and our survival at whatever price or hardship will be a first lesson in stability. Whether this lesson will provide the impetus for yet more growth from a nuclear-based economy, or whether it could form the basis of a more rational society, remains to be seen. The autonomous house would only form a very small part of this total picture, but it is an object that can be grasped and realized in material terms at present.

However, the attractive idea of a house generating its own power and recycling its own wastes is almost as difficult to realize as the idea of a stable economy. Apart from the physical limitations of income-energy sources, the system can be made only marginally competitive with existing methods of servicing houses. This difficulty could be removed if autonomy did not have to fit within the present system. At the moment, however, with houses already more expensive than most people can afford, the idea of an increased capital cost for houses, even though future running costs would be reduced, could never be accepted.

The idea of autonomy probably arose from two quests. The first was to gain free power for house heating, etc., so that conventional fuels need not be bought, and the second was to free the planning of communities. At present any new building must link to an existing or purpose-built service network. Cities, therefore, expand around their edges in order to keep houses on the mains, although expansion is limited by the size of the existing servicing plants. Removal of this restraint would enable houses to be built virtually anywhere, and communities would be formed for a more logical reason than the need to be fed and watered at a central point. Existing cities can be likened to babies in that they are serviced completely from the outside and the control of their functions is at the will of a very few people. If any one person declares a state of emergency, half a million people may sit in the dark unable to help themselves. Autonomy could provide for every community to become adult. Each person or community would be in control of his own heating, lighting, food production, etc. A real decentralization of control would be achieved and every person would become self-governing.

How desirable such decentralization is in political terms, with removal of choice from the few to the many, is open to discussion. An autonomous country would mean one where there would be no growth in the economy, where population size was strictly controlled, where a higher standard of living could not be expected, where resources were shared equally between every man, where freedom to act was curtailed by the need to survive. The society would be unlike any that we know at the moment. It would encompass something of many previous political doctrines but it would be aimed at providing for the survival of mankind, given that our present method of living off capital cannot go on for all time.

Any acceptance of the desirability of autonomy can only be based on faith. If you believe that it is important for man to be part of his natural ecology, to know how survival is accomplished, to be in control of his own life, then autonomy is a logical outcome. If, however, you believe that mankind has always solved every problem that arises, that eventually some way will be found for dealing with nuclear waste after a given number of years of research and that the benefits of cheap nuclear power outweigh the possible dangers, then there is no case for autonomy and the status quo will be maintained.