The outmoded notion of the 'alpha wolf'

 

 

 

For some reason, Facebook algorithms find this post "against community standards". So I have cut and pasted the whole thing here:

From Anti-Porn Feminists

 

 

 

Wolves fighting for dominance as a “thing” came from observation of captive packs. Observation of genuinely wild packs has revealed that it is not, in fact, a “thing.”

They weren’t even captive packs, they were a bunch of unrelated wolves shoved together in too-small a space.

So if you’re an ‘alpha wolf’ then you are, in point of fact, not the noble, fierce and imposing leader of a group who respects you, but a scared wild creature with no social support frantically lashing out at strangers to try and gain some semblance of control over a fundamentally uncontrollable environment?

That would explain a few things.

"The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature at least partly because of my book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” written in 1968, published in 1970, republished in paperback in 1981, and currently still in print, despite my numerous pleas to the publisher to stop publishing it. Although most of the book’s info is still accurate, much is outdated. We have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years then in all of previous history.

One of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. “Alpha” implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. 

However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. 

In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that’s all we call them today, the “breeding male,” “breeding female,” or “male parent,” “female parent,” or the “adult male” or “adult female.” 

In the rare packs that include more than one breeding animal, the “dominant breeder” can be called that, and any breeding daughter can be called a “subordinate breeder.” "

- David L. Mech 

Essentially, when men say they’re so alpha, what they’re actually saying is they’re scared shitless, out of their comfort zone and extremely freaked out by it.

If they waved a magic wand over an ACTUAL alpha male wolf in situ, he’d be a devoted husband and father who takes pride in providing and caring for his family, approachable and gregarious and quite even-keeled, and not inclined to threats or dick-measuring.

They probably haven’t clued in to the irony just yet.

Robert Sapolsky about his study of the Keekorok baboon troop from National Geographic’s Stress: Portrait of a Killer.

It’s actually pretty common across species, though the Keekorok troop is an excellent example because ALL the alpha males died.

The other “alpha male” example commonly cited is wolves–the problem for human “Alpha Males” being that wolves in their natural environment are essentially family groups consisting of Mom and Dad (who hunt), one or two juveniles (wolf teenagers, essentially, too young to form their own packs, but older than puppies) and then that year’s puppies–who are cared for by the younger juveniles.

Even in larger packs, it tends to be the same, just with more young adult/juvenile wolves sticking around to assist with the hunt–and packs like that really only exist where food sources permit (moose, bison, caribou).

The idea of hyper-dominant alpha male wolves comes from CAPTIVE wolf packs–take unrelated strangers and shove them into an environment full of stressors with a breakdown of the natural social order and no underlying community, and you get a “wolf pack”.  

Or, you know, prison.