Hoarding

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For the large outdoor signboard known as a hoarding, see Billboard (advertising). For other meanings, see Hoarding (disambiguation).

Hoarding is the storing of food or other goods. Hoarding of food is a natural behaviour in certain species of animals. It occurs in two forms:

Larder hoarding, the collection of large amounts of food in a single place (a larder), which usually also serves as the nest where the animal lives. Hamsters are famous larder hoarders. Indeed, some languages have a verb which is derived from hamster that means "to hoard" (e.g. German hamstern, Dutch hamsteren, and Swedish hamstra, or in non-germanic languages, Polish chomikować, from chomik – hamster. In Hebrew it goes the other way around - hamster; oger (אוגר) comes from to hoarde; le'egor (לאגור)).
Scatter hoarding, the formation of a large number of small hoards or caches of nuts and other seeds. Many species of squirrel, including the Eastern Gray Squirrel and the fox squirrel are well known for scatter hoarding. This behaviour plays an important part in seed dispersal, as those seeds that are left uneaten will have a chance to germinate, thus enabling plants to spread their populations effectively.

While humans are not notable for hoarding behavior, it is a common response to fear, whether fear of imminent society-wide danger or simple fear of a shortage of some good. When trouble looms (such as civil unrest or natural disaster), people's first instinct is to collect foodstuffs, water, gasoline and other essentials which they believe, rightly or wrongly, will soon be in short supply. (They also hoard money, especially if they expect deflation, in which falling prices mean that the purchasing power of money will rise.) This behaviour can often cause the very shortage which has been feared, and governments sometimes choose to introduce rationing in order to combat hoarding, as well as to reduce consumption and waste. However, those who have successfully hoarded the desired goods will not have to worry about the shortage, whether it was their fault or not. The compulsive collecting of objects is known as pathological or compulsive hoarding.

With the advent of personal computers people started hoarding digital data. In 1980s they started storing megabytes of interesting texts, images and software on floppy disks. Two decades later, computer users hoard on their hard disks gigabytes of songs, movies, software and pornography. Even though most of the content is not unique and can be easily downloaded from the Internet, many people enjoy creating large personal collections. Now, the data is slowly migrating to portable devices. For example, a 2004 UK study by Toshiba found 60% of the owners of portable devices store between 1000 and 2000 music files on them, the equivalent of 100 music CDs [link].

On a larger scale hoarding can be a business strategy similar to monopolisation, where an individual or organization attempts to temporarily control all available supplies of a given good in order to artificially increase the price. This strategy is also known as "cornering the market".

Hoarding

See also