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Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 9:50 am
I had always accepted that owners had to be an alpha over their dog based on how wolves behave. Lately, there have been studies that show that wolves don't have alpha positions. In the seventies, researchers studied wolves in captivity and assumed that the behavior that they saw was normal for wolves everywhere. It wasn't. Wolves in the wild don't have alpha and beta positions. Wolf packs are made up of a breeding pair and their offspring. When the offspring want to mate, they go off and form their own packs.
Of course, dogs, like kids, should be taught manners to make living with them more pleasurable both for the dog and the owner. I don't let my dogs in the kitchen, for example, because they get underfoot and it is dangerous for both them and me. But it is comforting to think that I don't have to make my dog do a trick every single time I want to pay them attention or worry that my pet is dominating me if she lays her head on my lap.
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 9:53 am
Do you mind providing a link to these studies, i'm really interested in this stuff.
And if there are no alphas, then how do they determine which pair breeds?
'The more I learn about people the more I like my dog'- Mark Twain
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 10:12 am
(December 3, 2014 at 9:50 am)Nope Wrote: . Wolves in the wild don't have alpha and beta positions.
The folks at the Endangered Wolf Center would be rather surprised to hear this.
Quote: Wolf packs are made up of a breeding pair and their offspring. When the offspring want to mate, they go off and form their own packs.
They aren't allowed to mate while the alphas are around. Betas either take over the pack or are driven off in most cases.
I'll have to forward the OP to some folks. 
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 10:31 am
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2014 at 11:00 am by Jenny A.)
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 12:51 pm
(December 3, 2014 at 10:31 am)Jenny A Wrote: Is it this one?
Why everything you know about wolf packs is wrong--summary of study.
Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs by L. David Mech --study itself.
Those look good. There are a lot of articles on this subject. National Geographic recently had a program on how dogs and wolves differ which was fascinating. Apparently, dogs naturally pay more attention to humans to help solve a problem while wolves tend to solve those same problems on their own.
Quote:In more recent years, animal behaviorists, including Mech, have spent more and more time studying wolves in the wild, and the behaviors they have observed has been different from those observed by Schenkel and other watchers of zoo-bound wolves. In 1999, Mech's paper "Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs" was published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. The paper is considered by many to be a turning point in understanding the structure of wolf packs.
and
Quote:While the captive wolf studies saw unrelated adults living together in captivity, related, rather than unrelated, wolves travel together in the wild. Younger wolves do not overthrow the "alpha" to become the leader of the pack; as wolf pups grow older, they are dispersed from their parents' packs, pair off with other dispersed wolves, have pups, and thus form packs of their owns.
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 3:58 pm
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.
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 6:41 pm
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2014 at 6:48 pm by Nope.)
(December 3, 2014 at 3:58 pm)Jenny A Wrote: 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
Quote: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.
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.
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 7:00 pm
I have heard that people decided to study wolves by putting two complete strangers in a cage and see what they'd do. They would fight for dominance, and researchers thought this was how wolves behaved normally. In a proper pack, it's mainly made up of the parents and their children.
It is true that if you spoil a dog, it will be less obedient, but it's the same with human children too.
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 7:40 pm
Mech is the author of the single study I found.
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RE: Dog Lovers, Did You Know The Alpha Wolf Is A Myth?
December 3, 2014 at 8:23 pm
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2014 at 8:25 pm by Nope.)
(December 3, 2014 at 7:40 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Mech is the author of the single study I found.
Wasn't he also the one that came up with the alpha wolf theory in the first place? I am finding a lot of articles about the fact that there isn't an alpha or beta wolf but I am not certain how to find studies. Do biologists have a data base that is available on the internet? Even the articles mention Dr. Mech. That might be because he is well respected in his field but there should be some other studies on both sides.
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