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.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    21 year ago

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

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      31 year ago

      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.