Animals’ territories

This paper develops a conceptual framework for research on animals’ territories. It starts from a genealogy of the fraught traffic of territorial ideas between ethology and geography, in which the disavowal of biological determinism led to a stark humanist divide in territorial research in political geography. It argues that this division is founded on an anachronistic understanding of animal behaviour, which hinders the development of a more-than-human conception of territory in political geography, ultimately limiting critical analysis of the widespread and often devastating human impacts on animals’ territories. To redress these problems, the second and third sections draw on recent ethological research to introduce animals’ terrain – defined as the material properties of a territory sensed in relation to animals’ Umwelten – and animals’ territorialities or territorial practices. It shows how analyses of animals help further calls for plural and material accounts of territory. A fourth section outlines and evaluates a model of territory for a practical politics of multispecies coexistence premised on wild diplomacy through interspecies communication. The conclusions identify key points for dialogue with both animal and political geographers. The analysis is illustrated with examples of the territorial birds and mammals that predominate in research in ethology and animal geography.