YSK that there is no such thing as an "alpha wolf"

Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 999 points –

Some of the many articles about it:

The notion that wolves fight amongst each other and the strongest becomes the "alpha" and the weakest is the "omega" and all that, is a misconception that has been debunked ages ago, and even the author of the study who called them "alphas" in the first place is pleading with his old publisher to stop printing the dang book already so this misconception can finally die out.

Wolf packs are more or less just families. One "breeding pair" and their pups, which often stay with their parents way into adulthood.

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Considering the original study only documented Wolves in captivity I explain it like this: Alpha, Beta, Sigma, whatever, is just the type of prison bitch you'd be, so congrats.

Exactly this. Put any one species into a tiny depressing enclosure with way too many strangers and way too little food, and they will fight and establish a pecking order eventually. This has nothing to do with how the same species would behave in the wild and with enough resources to live comfortably, and the author realized that mistake years ago and is since trying to correct it.

But I guess the entire "alpha male" thing is just too popular with certain people ... ahem.

I chuckle inside and exit the room at the first chance when someone non-jokingly refers to themselves as an alpha male. And that's not because I'm afraid of them--the fact is that I'm the alpha male.

/s

Humans in packed cities could be described in a similar way though, if there's not a social reinforcement in place, by the community elders who are respected and followed, to keep them from it. I live in a medium sized city now because of work, but even still I can relate to the rats [I'm aware of the studies flaws].

Put any one species into a [packed] depressing [space] with way too many strangers and way too [varied amounts of resources per individual], and they will fight and establish a pecking order eventually. This has nothing to do with how the same species would behave in the wild and with enough resources to live comfortably.

I grew up in the country with tens of acres and my nearest neighbor was a mile away. Separated from the small town nearby by a river and surrounded by thick hedgerows going miles around in every direction, with a huge open space (fields) between our house and the hedgerows. I've never been happy in the city. No matter where I am, I feel like I'm in a cage. I'm not agoraphobic but there's a sense of being 'watched' when I leave my house that just isn't there when you live in a remote area. All the people, sights, sounds, smells can be incredibly overwhelming at times.

I am only capable of attaining a true level of peace when I'm in nature.

yeah no this is a bad take, humans are arguably the single most social species on earth and cities are where almost everyone lives for a damn good reason.

It's not healthy for most people to live isolated in the countryside, we need a community to maintain mental health.

You're looking at it very black and white, as if you can't live in a peaceful more remote area but still visit with friends and have them over, socialize at work, etc. After all, if you live in a city you don't live with or talk to all the people you see, they're just there, noise in the background.

Whether or not it's a real concept doesn't matter to these people, all that matters is whether it appeals to their pre conceived notions or not.

Also a great argument for the fact that caging humans doesn't change anything in a positive direction. Especially when you enslave them too like in countries with barbaric penal systems such as the US.

The sad part is that a no small amount of prisons (especially "for profit" prisons) don't have the end goal of rehabiliting the inmates in the first place. It's all about cheap labor. They don't want to change anything into a positive direction.

Funny that pecking order is something you see in chickens. So these human alpha males are copying hen behavior.

We see it chickens that are in a prison like environment.

nah chickens are just terrible terrible creatures, even if they have all the space they could ever want they will still peck each other and will blithely peck flockmates to death if they have a wound.

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In other related news, the makers of these shirts watched their stock prices plummet today:

The magic of Three Wolf Moon exists on an entirely different plane than anything else wolf related. Those wolves are no longer a one-man wolfpack.

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Ironically its that they don't have "alphas" in the wild because they just separate and leave each other alone...

For humans in school, prisons, and even just work environments we're a lot more like captive wolves than wild

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. When keeping wolves in captivity, humans typically throw together adult animals with no shared kinship. 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.

That being said, any person describing themselves as an alpha is usually a big piece of shit.

Personally, I like the "alpha as in new software" approach: Alpha version = unstable, missing important features, filled with flaws, prone to breakdown and not fit for the public.

Oh I’m definitely stealing this my dear. That’s gold

I can see myself coming up to a Alfa dude and say "are you Alfa Wolf as in a wolf stuck in captivity or Alfa Wolf as in the first and incomplete version of a wolf

I actually met and interviewed Mech some years ago while working on a story regarding wolves in Oregon. He was a kind and very approachable person.

Fun fact; his name is pronounced "Meech," not "mech" as in "mechanic."

A lot of guys have started calling themselves sigma males, but i just approach them and tell them I'm a Smegma male which is over a sigma male. 😤 these are facts that cannot be disputed.

Would you like cheese on that?

🧀 🍆

They’re just jealous because Smegma males come with built in flavor enhancers. Women crave for our taste and scent. 😤💪🏼

As I'm from Brazil, I proud myself in being lambda (the spelling is very close to "lambida", or "a lick")

Just like the vaccines cause autism study, this won't ever die out. People only ever remember the original.

People only ever remember the original.

And only partially so. Conveniently, they forget the part where, IIRC, guy was just trying to promote his own vaccine

Ironic. It wasn't his own vaccine. It was two vaccines that he held stock in.

His name was on the patent. There was a second name on it as well, and that guy was someone whom the first cited. This second guy lost his license two years before publishing his paper, that the infamous one cited.

Yeah, I tried explaining this to a "dog person" and they wanted no part of it. It was like telling a child Santa Claus wasn't real or something

also the microwave study, learned about that one from my sister.

These days, the only people still using this debunked wolf talk are douchebros, chuds, & incels.

There's no shortage of well meaning dog owners who don't know any better.

Indeed. There are many still who are making big bucks on this misconception. The worst offender in my opinion is "The dog whisperer", who is likely the worst well known dog trainer, and has done (and still does) a lot of damage. The whole basis for his school of thought is based on this alpha/beta/omega hierarchy.

I only watched his show once and it was so clear that he was abusive that I couldn't even watch the whole episode. Just disgusting.

Chimpanzees do, though (source). and they're closer to humans than wolves.

The whole alpha wolf thing kind of sounds like projection.

I don't mind calling the posers prime chimps.

Honestly, that feels like giving them too much credit. Chimps are fucking terrifying. The more I learn about them, the more I wonder "jesus fucking christ, how badass/insane was Jane Goodall?!". Those things are the closest things to real demons I've ever heard about.

Edit: well, aside from particularly unhinged humans

Yeah but bonobos are close to chimpanzees and humans too yet they have totally different culture than chimpanzees.

In fact, bonobos used to be a subspecies of chimpanzees but because that nonviolent culture, they've become their own species.

chimps = tribal proto cavemen

bonobos = sex loving hippies

I, for one, would much rather be on the bonobo group

Ah yes, but have you considered the gargantuan confirmation bias of anyone willing to map debunked wolf social dynamics onto humans?

Yes but you implied that even if there's no alpha male in wolves, there's alpha male in chimps and while we can't apply wolf's power dynamic to humans, we can with chimps because they're a closer species to us. I wanted to point out that there's another close relatives of us and chimps (the bonobos) who are not actually violent so we still can't justify male violence on humans because we find it in chimps.

Those kinds of animals have always kinda fascinated me with how it just makes you wonder if there's a element of genomes when it comes to your personality

No idea about personality traits, but there have been studies about what kind of human behavior, especially facial expressions, might be "pre programmed" in our genes. For example, rolling your eyes when you're frustrated with someone, or raising your eyebrows when you are surprised - that's something even most blind people do instinctively, despite never having seen it / never learned it from others.

Not really. In chimps, if you want to have the highest status as a male, you have to form coalitions of friendship with other relatively high-status males. Chimp males who try to simply beat the shit out of everyone else without forming coalitions, tend to get "dealt with" prison style where the rest of the troop's males show up 4 or 5 deep and either beat the shit out of them, or fucking kill them.

Chimps are metal as fuck in this regard.

That said, while it's true that we get a lot of insight into human behavior by studying non-human primate behavior, it's not the case, nor does anyone who matters argue as such, that human behavior is or should be precisely analogous to what we see in our close relatives.

I'm pretty sure Moon Moon is an alpha version wolf.

LIES, EVERYONE KNOWS I'M THE ALPHA AWOOOOOO 🐺🐺🐺

People who say alpha wolves don't exist obviously never seen me crankin my hog. ARRRROOOOOOOO

HE'LL YEAH BROTHER NOTHING LIKE CRANKING A COLD ONE AFTER CRACKING YOURE HOG AROOOOOOO

They're called High Value Wolves these days.

Women: Get some minute fraction of some sort of competitive advantage against men, in a single arena, when the OnlyFans "revolution" happened

Men: I'm suddenly a "high value male" ! Who is probably broke af

  • a man

I mean if you believed that shit in the first place you're probably not going to believe this post eh

At least it helps point out the awful people who use the terms "Alpha" and "Beta" unironically to describe people.

Wolves are also scavengers and would gladly eat rotten corpses, trash and literal shit (just like dogs).

Why do I need to know this? Will this help me if I get attacked by a pack of wolves?

I think it has something to do with the two wolves inside you

I don't know what you've heard about me, but I can assure you that I have never had a wolf inside me. I've never been inside a wolf either. There was that one time I was drunk at a hotel where a furry convention was going on, but I don't think that really counts.

Well, if one of the very rare wolf packs left in the wild decided to actually attack a human, yes it would.

Not necessarily because of the whole alpha misinformation being corrected, but it would mean you'd know something about their behavior and how to deal with them.

Mind you, a wolf attacking a human isn't exactly common. They have to be starving usually.

And, yes, that's partially poking fun at you, but it's also true. Understanding the behaviors of animals tends to improve outcomes of encounters. For example, using body language correctly can deter the local feral dog packs that have mixed with coyote. If you read up enough, watch video footage of canine responses to each other away from captivity, you can learn how to behave like something they don't want to attack in the first place by neither challenging them or triggering prey drive.

If some idiot tried to act "alpha" when facing canines in numbers is likely to get you attacked. It might work on single dogs, but wouldn't against a pack