So I read constantly online that "alpha" wolves don't exist, yet I have watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4vFBXOoHs0
this video very clearly shows alpha behavior.
why the FUCK do people claim alpha wolves don't exist? fucking stupid
Alpha Wolves Exist
Yes it's called the "alpha pair", technically. The idea of an alpha male that is supremely dominant is false, it's a rarity/aberration. The dominance of the alpha pair is their birthright. Their behavior to the rest of the pack can be helpful, benevolent, and playful. Lone wolves can be permitted to join the pack by the alpha pair, and they join because they love and respect the alpha pair, not because they are beaten into submission. They are only dominated when they try to move out of their place without truly deserving it.
Basically how it ACTUALLY is with humans. The dominance of an "alpha" male is his birthright. Alpha males are adult men with children. More children, more alpha. His willing subservients become his extended family through their shared respect of his success. "earning" it with violence is an aberration and a fragile arrangement. Wolves and humans are quite similar in that way.
the "muh there are no alphas wolfs, packs r just a family xD" is reddit/deviantart-tier smartassery. Even in family units there is social hierarchy. in groups of wolves, related or not, there is social hierarchy. Some individuals are above others in the pecking order. In the end, the alpha argument is all about semantics.
Just like you were bottom rung in your family’s pecking order XD
Unironically the first time I've ever heard that alpha wolves don't exist. Where did you hear that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/b5njx6/til_wolf_packs_do_not_have_an_alpha_wolf_nor_do/ is one example
You're missing the point. Lizards have status competitions too but they mostly don't organise into permanent dominance hierarchies because its a moment to moment outcome. Nobody thinks wolf packs aren't hierarchical in the sense of seniority but that's very different from saying "le wolf is angry, therefore wolves are the same as my shitty /LULZ/ life"
its baffling to me how the word alpha can be associated with psychopathic behavior.
Just because someone is competent enough to be a leader doest men he has to abuse his followers wtf! Why are americans like this?
Rudolph Schenkel - who first coined the term and described the behavior - recanted the idea when he realized it was all based on captive wolves, and observed that wolves in wild behaved differently.
Captive wolves and wild wolves behaving differently doesn't change the fact that hierarchy exists within packs. Even in wild wolves, each pack behaves differently. There are even wild packs that include unrelated individuals.
No one a guess hierarchy does not exist.
What does not exist is the struggle for that hierarchy, and fights leading to a change in dominant breeder pair.
That struggle only came about from forcing unrelated wolves into close proximity.
>Even in wild wolves, each pack behaves differentl
So this would lead an honest person to even further discount some alpha wolf standard.
>a guess
"argues"
So the word 'alpha' can only be used if a battle for the role of breeding pair exists in every single group of an animal species?
Big doubt.
It should be changed to avoid confusion with the recanted social structure, as most biologists have done in favor of "dominant breeding pair".
The problem is the dishonesty you and others show in "familial structure seen in most packs isn't universal, therefore we should use terms and understandings that are observed in even less common occurrence."
>The problem is the dishonesty you and others show in "familial structure seen...
Wrong. I think the word alpha can apply to familial structures.
You are allowed to think wrong things.
Nobody says there’s no hierarchy. Alpha is not a term applicable to wolves, there’s a better argument for the term in things like chimps and baboons
>Alpha is not a term applicable to wolves
It can be applicable. Unless you want to be a dumbass and pretend that the word has a different definition for wolves than it does every other animal because reddit says so.
It has the same definition, wolves just don’t act in the traditional sense of an alpha by dominating all the weaker wolves through brute force
That's not the definition. It never was.
Not really. The dominance models that use the term alpha is better seen in walruses or chimps. Using those terms for wolves that generally organize in a very different way only obfuscates. The only reason to keep it is because people have translated the false model to humans and want to keep it as a form of legitimization.
The people that talk constantly about "alpha wolves" for some strange reason don't want to identify as "alpha chimp."
So yeah, just semantics about the connotations of what alpha means like
says
THEY EXIST!!!!!!!!!!!