The Territorial Imperative

By Robert Ardrey, Berdine Ardrey (illustrator),

Book cover of The Territorial Imperative

Book description

A territory is an area of space which an animal guards as its exclusive possession and which it will defend against all members of its kind. In this revolutionary book Robert Ardrey takes a concept familiar to every biologist, brings together for the first time a fair sampling of all…

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Topics

Biology

Genres

Science

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Territorial Imperative as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Loretta Graziano Breuning

Author

Animals are picky about who they mate with. Biologists have explained a wide array of mating strategies, and this book is an “intimate” look at one of them: territoriality. This book gets down and dirty, as it were, to see how animals fight for turf and how it promotes their genes. It’s a great read - not a stuffy textbook - and it’s part of a series of 4 so you may want to keep going as I did.

Another older book that opened my eyes is The Human Side of Animals by Vance Packard. Together, these books showed me…

From Loretta's list on the animal mind.