Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?

[Nope]

Yes, but that one study is all I could find. That's not much to hang a complete reworking of how wolf behavior is viewed.

Here is something else. It is from the Dave Mech who wrote a book that made the word, alpha wolf a popular term.

http://www.davemech.org/news.html

Outmoded notion of the alpha wolf

The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature at least partly because of my book "The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species," written in 1968, published in 1970, republished in paperback in 1981, and currently still in print, despite my numerous pleas to the publisher to stop publishing it. Although most of the book's info is still accurate, much is outdated. We have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years then in all of previous history.

One of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. "Alpha" implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that's all we call them today, the "breeding male," "breeding female," or "male parent," "female parent," or the "adult male" or "adult female." In the rare packs that include more than one breeding animal, the "dominant breeder" can be called that, and any breeding daughter can be called a "subordinate breeder

I didn't do a long search. I will see if I can find something else.

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Here is a FAQ by Mech on another site, The International Wolf Center

http://www.wolf.org/learn/basic-wolf-info/wolf-faqs/#f

Here is Dr. Mech in a short youtube video. I didn't know that he was Senior Research Scientist of the US Department of the Interior

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNtFgdwTsbU

I have got to make dinner but I will see if I can find anything else.