Mech used the alpha wolf nomenclature in a classic book of wolf biology, The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, which was published in 1970. “Those are places where there can be at least competition and sometimes conflict, but it’s a snap or two.” The adults will kind of keep the yearlings away from the carcass while the adults feed and feed the pups,” he says. “Let’s say that pair has some yearling wolves that haven’t dispersed yet. Indeed, even general family conflict is rare, Mech says. The alpha wolf notion of challenging dad for dominance of the existing pack just isn’t in the wolf playbook. When offspring are two to three years old, they leave the pack in search of mates, aiming to start their own pack. The same is true across gray wolf packs: Infighting for dominance is basically unheard of in a typical pack. The youngest pups also submit to their older siblings, though when food is scarce, parents feed the young first, much as human parents might tend to a fragile infant. It revealed that all members of the pack defer to the breeding male and that, regardless of sex or age, all pack members besides that male defer to the breeding female. His study, published in 1999 in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, was among the first multiyear research on a single pack over time. In the late 1980s and 1990s Mech observed a pack every year at Ellesmere Island in northeastern Canada. In contrast, wild wolf packs are usually made up of a breeding male, a breeding female and their offspring from the past two or three years that have not yet set out on their own-perhaps six to 10 individuals. In these cases, a dominance hierarchy arises, Mech adds, but it’s the animal equivalent of what might happen in a human prison, not the way wolves behave when they are left to their own devices. When keeping wolves in captivity, humans typically throw together adult animals with no shared kinship. This terminology arose from research done on captive wolf packs in the mid-20th century-but captive packs are nothing like wild ones, Mech says. But now they are decades out of date, he says.

Mech, like many wildlife biologists, once used terms such as alpha and beta to describe the pecking order in wolf packs. Related: “Mind Control” Parasite Makes Wolves Effective Pack Leaders And that’s exactly the way it is with wolves.” Geological Survey, who has studied wolf packs in the wild for decades. David Mech, a senior research scientist at the U.S. “What would be the value of calling a human father the alpha male?” says L. The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator is pervasive, lending itself to a shorthand for a kind of dominant masculinity.īut it turns out that this is a myth, and in recent years wildlife biologists have largely dropped the term “alpha.” In the wild, researchers have found that most wolf packs are simply families, led by a breeding pair, and bloody duels for supremacy are rare. If you’ve ever heard the term “alpha wolf,” you might imagine snapping fangs and fights to the death for dominance.

Alpha wolf drawing