Christina's Thoughts - Post a comment

So much for the "Alpha Male" idea of wolf packs.

L. David Mech is a famous wolf researcher (and a blogger about his research). If you have heard of a concept of "alpha-male" it is because of ideas from an old book of his, about social structure of wolf societies.

However, most of the early research on wolves was done on artificially built groups, e.g., wolves caught in various places all put together in a single wolf pen at a zoo. In such rare and unnatural situations, these stranger-wolves do indeed form social hierarchies (or "pecking order" - a term that arose from studies of chickens). But such situations rarely if ever happen out in nature. A pack of wolves is usually composed of Mother, Father and their (sometimes quite grown-up) offspring: closely related individuals who know each other well.

These days, it is L. David Mech himself who is working the hardest to change the way we think about wolf (and dog) packs and to eliminate the term "alpha male" at least from studies of canid behavior if not from metaphors about human societies (hat-tip to Jim Henley). Decades have passed since his book came out, much research was done in the meantime (including by him and his students) and we now know better.