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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Poec54" data-source="post: 40823" data-attributes="member: 3524">You can't apply the laws of civilized society to animals.  Advancing or retreating is a human legal distinction.  Their territory also encompasses their hunting ground, not just their retreat or lair.  While we consider it aggression if someone hits us if we walk on their lawn, it's totally different in the animal world.  When you walk on an animal's territory, innocent and oblivious as you may be, by your presence you are issuing a challenge to the animal that considers that territory to be theirs. If you lived in West Africa and had a tall fruit tree in your yard with a Stromatopelma in it, it's not going to run down and bite you when you walk by that tree.  But if you climb the tree to pick fruit, you are in the spider's territory, you've inadvertently challenged it.  It may engage you to get you to leave.  In a human court of law, the spider is the aggressor.  In nature, you are.  They decide when they feel their life is threatened, and whether their territory has been invaded, not you.  People that get near a mother grizzly bear and are attacked; we consider that to be an aggressive bear.  To the bear, it's defending it's cubs and you were a perceived threat.  You confronted it, and it responded.  Human law and legal fine print is irrelevant in nature.  As long as you look at it from a civilized society perspective, you won't understand their motivation.  A spider's cage is it's territory, and some species may consider the area around it theirs too.  Some want a buffer zone, especially if they live with relentless predators.  Again, they decide what is theirs, not humans.</blockquote>

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