Alpha male wolves do not exist in the wild!

It sounds appealing, but this is just a concept that many people impose on themselves to pretend that they are special.

And the alpha male wolf is defined as the leader male wolf with superior qualities such as the strongest of the pack, dominating and leading other male wolves. Accordingly, many people have associated this with the male wolf. people and self-identified as alpha males.

But where did this term actually come from? The phrase dates back to the 1940s, when a researcher named Rudolph Schenkel wrote a paper on wolves called "Wolf Expression Studies," according to Gizmodo. The article was taken from the study of captive wolves, which suggested that wolves live in social structures dominated by an alpha male and an alpha female. These alphas can be eliminated through conflict from pack members, but as long as they are in power, these individuals will decide and impose their behavior on other wolves as well as other wolves. control the structure of the whole herd.

In captivity, male wolves will use violence to determine the hierarchy in the pack as well as compete for females, food, mating rights.

Then an article by a scientist named David Mech promoted the term even further, according to Discover. People quickly understood this description of wolves, and even inferred that the alpha structure must also apply to other social systems, including human social systems. But in fact, further studies have suggested that this is not the case. As early as the 1990s, scientists presented evidence that alpha wolves really don't exist in the wild.

What do wild wolves really look like?

For wolves in the wild, things seem much more harmonious. Their pack is built from family members, and accordingly, the parent wolf is always the leader.

Our understanding of wolves becomes more accurate as scientists broaden their horizons. In addition to wolves in captivity, they observed wolves living in the wild for further research into the behavior of this species. They found that groups of wolves in captivity mostly form competitive social structures with alpha males and females, but in the wild, wolves are actually made up of individuals with close kinship: Namely mother and father, and their children.

In these groups, the parent wolves will be responsible for leading the pack, it is extremely unlikely that the pups will challenge their parents to control their pack. Instead, the puppies will stay with their parents until they're about a year old, after which they'll risk breaking away from the pack to claim their own territory and mates, according to ZME Science.

Accordingly, the phrase alpha wolf is probably only true for wolves in captivity, because they are strange individuals that humans have gathered together to form a pack. In the wild, but wolves are built from blood relations, the parents are always the leaders to raise children together. Either there have been a few cases of large wolf packs in the wild - where three or four generations of wolves can live together, the oldest pair of wolves will lead, or not, several pairs of wolves. can separate and form their own flocks.

An alpha (or leader or dominant or dominant individual) is the biological term for an individual's position in a herd in a social animal. Accordingly, the individual is always at the top of the herd and enjoys many privileges. Males, females, or both can be alpha individuals, depending on the species (for example, in chimpanzees, males will be alpha males, while in hyenas, females will be alpha). In cases where a male and a female perform this role together, they are sometimes referred to as alpha pairs.

Alpha dominant individuals are often prioritized when they are given food by other individuals or are allowed to approach and flirt with mates. Alphas can gain their status by their own strength to rise to the top or through their efforts to communicate and build alliances within the group. High-ranking individuals sometimes change, often through a fight between themselves and a subordinate, in a fight that can cause injury or possibly death.