A reassessment of the function of scent-marking in territories [Réévaluation de la fonction du marquage odorant des territoires].

Résumé

The energetic costs and the risk of injury in agonistic encounters can be reduced by prior assessment of opponents it will generally pay low quality animals to avoid combat with one of high quality. Following this principle it is suggested that territory owners scent mark their territories to provide intruders wuth a means of assessment. When the odour of a competitor, or of a mark it is seen to have made, matches that of scent marks encountered in the vicinity, then the competitor is probably the territory owner. Since owners are generally high quality animals, and assuming they have more to gain by retaining a territory than intruder has in taking it over, it will pay the owner to escalate and the intruder to give up early. The advantage to owners in marking may thus be that by allowing themselves to be identified they reduce the costs of territory defence. Published information on the behaviuor of territory owners and intruders is consistent with predictions from this hypothesis. The hypothesis offers an explanation for a number of poorly understood behaviours including self-anointing and scent marking during agonistic encounters.