[uhdhr]

If you enter a bear's den, especially if it has cubs, the bear will likely attack you.

If you enter the territory of a swan, especially during nesting season, the swan might attack you.

If a foreign object enters some animal's body, the immune system may attack that object.[0] Allergy might be related to the immune system misidentifying allergens.

Squirrels can be surprisingly territorial.

Ants have wars. [1]

This is not surprising, since the consequences of territory being compromised can be severe. For instance, in this case [2], the territory was compromised through deception, like pretending to be one of them, and it led to the severe weakening or death of the whole colony through the mass devouring of their offspring.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_body_reaction

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_ants

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/123ke...

[guerrilla]

Right, so birds protrcting their nests means they shouldn't be allowed to migrate thousands of miles every year. Makes sense. ;)

We must ban the squirrels from ever leaving the tree they grew up in! Let no bear seek a new cave lest she be punished with a swift death.

[gosub100]

I agree, and one of their great concerns is keeping foreign spies from getting in. Even though Russia isn't in good graces with the world currently, I think it's I'll advised to go off-script with any nation's border checkpoints.

[bluedino]

Just this morning I watched a video someone shared on LinkedIn. A lion cub was being nursed by a ewe!

[uhdhr]

There are cases of pet dogs, having great relationships with their owners, eating the corpses of their owners after the owners died of some unrelated reasons. Possibly due to starvation in some cases.

In that video, was the ewe and lion cub pets or wild animals?

[yawpitch]

So you’re saying we are no better than animals, and shouldn’t aspire to be?

[falcor84]

It was clearly a response to the grandparent's "... isn't like this for other animals". It's a fine thing to aspire to be better, but we just shouldn't be claiming that human behavior is any way less natural than that of all other animals.

[uhdhr]

Please define "better" in this context.

One definition of "better" could be to seek to avoid the extinction of the human species and of civilization. With that definition, in the current situation, taking measures to help avoid nuclear weapon usage, could be considered in depth and genuinely "better".

[uhdhr]

You can also consider the subject in terms of IT. Firewalls can be argued to delimit territory, as can login systems. Sandboxes are probably the reverse, in terms of keeping something in instead of keeping it out.

Some cells have cell walls, and viruses as I understand it have to penetrate that wall.

Nuts and fruit sometimes have protective shells.

An argument could be made that borders and territory are fundamental.

For an agent that seeks to defeat border control mechanisms, it can potentially be effective to convince the target parties that border control mechanisms generally or specifically are harmful, are useless, or have drawbacks. This is not always completely false in all cases, for instance regarding immune systems misidentifying harmless allergens as harmful, causing potentially significant harm as allergy. However, if an agent uses such approaches, they have to be careful not to buy into that idea themselves, lest matters may become strange and weird. And, in the modern day, if an agent is especially successful and competent with defeating border control mechanisms, considering the extreme power that the human species holds these days, such as with nuclear weapons, it puts an extreme responsibility on such successful agents, at least in the current systems. Otherwise, the consequences might be extremely detrimental to the human species as a whole.

[yawpitch]

What an interesting set of increasingly bad metaphors.

IT defenses are just an existing human cognitive bias carried forward into a new realm… a bad idea carried forward is still a bad idea.

The cell wall of the vascular plants doesn’t exist to keep viruses (or anything) out, it exists to provide structural rigidity and keep water pressure in… in fact any plant without a sufficiently permeable cell wall dies as a consequence.

The virus in turn isn’t an agent at all, it just passively exploits the permeability of cell walls and membranes in order to replicate. In doing so it helps drive the cell’s evolution, by both acting as a pressure and a mutagen. Life, again, depends on information transfer across permeable membranes.

Nuts and other fruits, by the way, are the sexual apparatus of the plant… they don’t even begin to develop until a migration has occurred, and once they’ve developed their primary purpose is, again, to keep energy and water in more than they’re to keep anything out… in fact they universally fail to function if they’re too good at keeping the outside out.

[_heimdall]

We are animals, we shouldn't try to avoid that as if its a bad thing.

[yawpitch]

We should be, then, at least equal to animals in our behavior, and should also aspire to improve on them.