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

givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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.

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