Scent marking

Abstract

Of all the forms of behaviour concerned with maintaining a territory, the most direct are those used in actual physical combat with an intruder. Before dealing with fighting however, it is convenient to consider a different type of behaviour, more directly related to the animal’s home ground and less directly to trespassers upon it. The essential thing about a home is that it is familiar. To us, highly visual creatures, the important thing is the sight of familiar objects in their accustomed places and it is almost entirely by visual cues that we find our way about. It is therefore not altogether easy for us to appreciate that for other species olfactory cues may be at least as important as visual ones and that familiarity may be as much a matter of the known smells as of the known sights.