[HN Gopher] The Myth of the Alpha Wolf
___________________________________________________________________
The Myth of the Alpha Wolf
Author : cocacola1
Score : 104 points
Date : 2023-03-25 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| philshem wrote:
| http://archive.today/FsUbx
| deepzn wrote:
| Neat related video if interested: Meet the White Wolf Pack of
| Ellesmere Island | White Falcon, White Wolf (Part 2) | BBC Earth
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTDlGSIYvZs
| torstenvl wrote:
| I keep seeing this and similar claims come up, but they are never
| backed up by any substance -- including in this article.
|
| It's always the same formula, too.
|
| Step 1: Claim that the idea of an "alpha wolf" is a "myth."
|
| Step 2: Explain that packs are usually made up of families.
|
| Step 3:.... Nothing.
|
| Does anyone have any idea what they mean when they say it's a
| myth? What is the myth? In what way is the idea incorrect?
| DrewADesign wrote:
| You can't prove a negative. The burden of proof is on whoever
| makes the claim-- that wolf packs are led by alpha male wolves-
| not on everybody else to prove they aren't. One experiment in
| very unnatural conditions showed these results. They were not
| observed in subsequent studies that were better designed. Why
| would someone conduct an expensive study specifically to search
| for phenomena observed once but never again? Because of people
| so insecure they need to justify their antisocial, domineering
| behavior through unrelated research?
| pxc wrote:
| > You can't prove a negative.
|
| Idk why this saying persists. Many, many negatives are easy
| to prove. For instance, it is very provable that an adult
| elephant is not sleeping in your bed right now.
| [deleted]
| DrewADesign wrote:
| > Idk why this saying persists. Many, many negatives are
| easy to prove. For instance, it is very provable that an
| adult elephant is not sleeping in your bed right now.
|
| Sure in situations where you can see 100% of my beds, but
| the only meaningful context for that phrase is when you're
| trying to generalize information to learn about more than
| one thing in the world. You know... What studies do. The
| whole point of the scientific method. So what burden of
| proof would you recommend beyond subsequent observational
| studies in wolf behavior not showing this phenomena? Or
| were you just using a deliberately obtuse interpretation of
| that phrase for pure pedantry?
| nyrikki wrote:
| Why not go to the original myths author's explanation directly.
|
| https://davemech.org/wolf-news-and-information/
|
| Wolf.org also has resources related to the topic and they no
| longer use the term.
| torstenvl wrote:
| There is no explanation there. There is no articulated reason
| why "dominant breeder" (the new preferred term) is more
| accurate.
|
| The term "alpha" literally just means "first," as it has
| meant for millennia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals
|
| If wolves truly have no dominance hierarchy at all, then you
| can claim that the idea of there being an "alpha" or "first"
| is a myth.
|
| In any situation beyond that, this is just pseudoscientific
| pandering nonsense trolling for clicks.
| ononon wrote:
| yea it's basically bc masculinity (courage, independent
| thinking) = bad to people in power so they publish this
| kind of crap all day every day
| taurawah wrote:
| weird thing to suggest that courage and independent
| thinking are masculine traits
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Is it wrong or is it true? What's weird is your choice of
| words.
| nyrikki wrote:
| Claims about masculinity are often defined in opposition
| to ideas about femininity.
|
| The claim that woman cannot be courageous or independent
| thinkers is wrong.
|
| And as for societal ideals, specifically in response to a
| post showing that the concept of being a leader through
| aggression is also wrong.
|
| Aggression is often a response to fear.
|
| Fear is a secondary emotion, typically a response to pain
| or fear.
|
| I personally view aggressive behavior and the attempt to
| gain status through aggression as a reason to pity
| someone far more than it ever makes me respect them.
|
| If aggression is your primary method of gaining status
| you are not courageous, you are weak and lashing out.
|
| I pity those people because they tend to undervalued
| their own merits and instead of having the courage to
| lead by example or to be confident in their positions
| they have to resort to methods ranging from name calling
| to physical violence.
|
| A true leader doesn't need to resort to unrestrained fear
| based responses to gain or maintain status.
|
| By definition those who have to resort to aggression are
| weak and full of self doubt.
|
| Actions based on fear are not the actions of confident
| individuals but the actions of cowards resorting to
| letting fear drive their lives.
|
| Which is exactly why the original studies found 'alpha'
| behaviors in stressed populations.
|
| If you read the above papers you will find that in
| wolves, submission for the betterment of the pack takes
| much more courage than aggression.
|
| Incels tend to like the 'alpha' concept because it is
| justification for not stepping up and accepting that they
| have caused many of their own problems.
|
| It is only viewed as 'courage' to other individuals with
| low self worth.
|
| If you truly believe that aggression is courageous I
| sincerely suggest you work on looking at the examples of
| truly courageous people and not seeking the approval of
| low esteem individuals who make other low self esteem
| individuals feel better by idealizing fear based
| outbursts. Bullies are pitiful creatures who have to
| resort victimizing others to feel better about
| themselves.
|
| Typically people who yield to bullies don't respect them
| and those who aren't filled with self doubt simply pity
| them.
|
| Aggression for personal gain is a sign of weakness and
| doesn't relate to the concepts you mentioned.
| nyrikki wrote:
| "The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for
| his own self, the more ready is he to claim all
| excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his
| holy cause." - Eric Hoffer The True Believer
| nyrikki wrote:
| No multiple sources have explained that 'alpha' implies
| competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a
| contest or battle.
|
| Here is another.
|
| https://wolf.org/headlines/44265/
|
| You are offering a false dichotomy and suggesting that
| gaining dominance through force or challenge is the only
| path to authority.
|
| Also a 'dominance hierarchy' can exist without the need for
| contest or battle.
|
| If you have worked around dogs outside of the silly 'alpha'
| concept you will notice that dominant members can impact
| the behaviors of other members with a simple look or by
| withholding attention and positive reinforcement.
|
| This is why real professional dog training for working dogs
| is almost exclusively positive reinforcement these days.
|
| Fear and intimidation is a rather poor training method for
| domestic dogs.
|
| Of course if you want to discard the original meaning of
| 'alpha' as presented by the people who originally coined
| the term for your own personal definition no evidence they
| offer that their previous research was wrong will fit you
| expectations.
|
| 'Alpha' was specifically coined to describe their
| misunderstanding of behavior at the time and doesn't simply
| imply 'first' in their context.
|
| Dominance and aggression are separate behaviors that may
| have intersection but gaining status through aggression
| tends to result in unstable relationships and is incredibly
| expensive to males in species where it is a predominant
| method of gaining status.
|
| Wolves rarely gain status within their group through
| aggression, thus labeling the primary breeding pairs as
| 'alpha' by default is scientifically incorrect.
|
| Most of the status of the breeding pair was gained through
| breeding and not aggression and in reality true aggression
| is simply not typically tolerated by the dominant members
| of the pack.
| telchior wrote:
| I'm really not being facetious here -- you may be helped along
| by one of the definitions of "myth".
|
| > A popular belief or story that has become associated with a
| person, institution, or occurrence
|
| The institution here is wolf packs; the popular belief or story
| is, well, exactly that. A story, which sprung out of a research
| study that the actual researcher has admitted was fallacious.
|
| The popular belief is also fairly odd; it has nothing to do
| with wolves, but rather, with the need for humans (specifically
| men) to sort themselves into imaginary groups. Nobody besides
| scientists and naturalists ever really cared about wolf packs.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Who created the idea of an alpha? A human. It's a human word
| for a concept a human thought up. There's nothing biological or
| sociological to suggest it's even a real trope in animals. Even
| in mountain gorilla troops and other primates where there
| appears to be a single large adult male leading the group, it
| turns out from study that it's more of a profunctory role and
| the whole group is more involved with decisions. The idea of an
| alpha leader really comes more from human societies, as there's
| actual sociological evidence there, whereas with animals it
| usually comes down to a more mixed hierarchy.
| slibhb wrote:
| I don't think this is true. Humans, like other mammals, have
| fairly clear hierarchies. What's interesting (and what the
| article argues) is that these hierarchies aren't based on
| brute strength or ability to win a fight or aggressiveness
| (though these can be factors). But this doesn't change the
| fact that animals have clear hierarchies.
| setr wrote:
| I don't think anyone uses alpha/beta terminology to simply
| mean "the hierarchy", and I find it disingenuous that you
| keep arguing as such.
|
| The common interpretation is that "an alpha" is
| someone/thing that can take over a group by being the
| strongest (where strength in wolves is domination through
| physical strength, and humans in social domination). This
| is the myth. Hierarchies exist, but not for this reason.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Well, one of the first quotes in the article:
|
| > As Kira Cassidy, an associate research scientist with a
| National Park Service research program in Yellowstone,
| explained, "The wolves generally in those dominant positions
| are not there because they fought for it. It's not some battle
| to get to the top position. They're just the oldest, or the
| parents. Or, in the case of same-sex siblings, it's a matter of
| personality."
|
| Suggests the myth is that there's a top wolf in a dominant
| position in a group because they fought to get there, or were
| most aggressive. But that that's incorrect because the wolves
| in the dominant positions are usually just the oldest wolf
| around, or the parents of the other wolves. She goes on to say
| there is actually very little fighting within a pack.
|
| Is that the sort of thing you were asking about?
| microtherion wrote:
| The other detail mentioned in the article is that the Alpha
| Wolf theory came from studies in Zoos, where unrelated
| animals were kept together in undersized environments, i.e.,
| a setting that was particularly conductive to induce fights.
| torstenvl wrote:
| That gets at what another poster suggested, albeit very
| obliquely. Thank you!
|
| However, I ultimately don't find that responsive. There's
| still a pack leader. Whatever term is used for it is a
| question of human linguistics, not of wolf behavior. I fail
| to see how the idea of there being an alpha wolf/pack
| leader/whatever is a myth.
|
| In particular, claiming that _alpha wolf_ is a myth is quite
| a different thing from claiming that _alpha male_ is a myth.
| Since dominance relationships in a wolf pack are hardly
| affected by sex, the latter would be a defensible claim. The
| former is emphatically not.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5126626/#!po=0..
| ..
| highduc wrote:
| I think the "but it's a myth" thing resulted from the need
| to deny parts of human group behavior, that are not
| flattering for "lesser" individuals from said group, in the
| hopes that it invalidates their "lesser" position in that
| group. We're trying to "censor" a non-flattering concept
| (for some) without addressing the actual issue, namely that
| they do have a leader of sorts, a more privileged position.
| Gets the best/most food if need be, etc.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... Is the human behaviour you're talking about being
| lead by the oldest available person? That's how wolves
| work.
|
| Like, when someone describes themselves as "an alpha",
| they're generally, well, beyond showing themselves to be
| somebody to be ignored, also not claiming to be the
| oldest.
| highduc wrote:
| The word alpha is an approximation (in human terms) for
| certain privileges the group leader has, over the rest of
| the pack. You can name it or actively not name it either
| way. We use words to transmit ideas. But sure, if you
| want to be more precise you can make the distinction more
| finely between humans and wolves behavior.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| From the literature review section of an article by David
| Mech, a researcher OP mentions (the whole article is
| worth reading, and available online here):
|
| > As for high-ranking [wolf] animals asserting any
| practical control over subordinates, the nature of the
| interaction is highly conditional. For example, with
| large prey such as adult moose (Alces alces), pack
| members of all ranks (ages) gather around a carcass and
| feed simultaneously, with no rank privilege apparent
| (Mech 1966; Haber 1977); however, if the prey is smaller,
| like a musk ox calf, dominant animals (breeders) may feed
| first and control when subordinates feed (Mech 1988;
| National Geographic 1988).
|
| > Similarly, pups are subordinate to both parents and to
| older siblings, yet they are fed preferentially by the
| parents, and even by their older (dominant) siblings
| (Mech et al. 1999). On the other hand, parents both
| dominate older offspring and restrict their food intake
| when food is scarce, feeding pups instead. Thus, the most
| practical effect of social dominance is to allow the
| dominant individual the choice of to whom to allot food.
|
| > The only other rank privilege I am aware of in natural
| situations is that high-ranking pups are more assertive
| in competing for food deliveries by adults and sometimes
| accompany adults on foraging trips at an earlier age than
| do subordinates (Haber 1977).
|
| https://www.wolf.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2013/09/267alphastat...
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > I fail to see how the idea of there being an alpha
| wolf/pack leader/whatever is a myth.
|
| "alpha wolf" is not equivalent to "pack leader", and the
| 'myth' of the alpha wolf isn't that there is a wolf in
| charge that you could call "alpha wolf" if you wanted to,
| but that the leadership role was attained through
| dominance[1].
|
| As for the reason it is an interesting myth to explore,
| there are ideologies that build their basis of human
| interaction around dominance hierarchies e.g. alpha/beta
| male manosphere stuff, parts of Jordan Peterson's work.
|
| Of course proving or disproving dominance hierarchies in
| wolves doesn't necessarily mean anything for its
| applicability to humans, but the connection probably does
| make it a more clickable topic to write about, especially
| because proponents of those ideologies often use animal
| behavior to support their theories.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy
| edmundsauto wrote:
| The best reinterpretation I've seen is to consider
| "alphas" as software releases rather than wolves. Ie,
| it's a prototype not ready for interaction with the
| public, for internal testing until the bugs are worked
| out.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The article says it's a myth that the leader gets there by
| competing with other wolves, not that it's a myth there is
| a leader, true. I think it's suggesting that many people
| have ideas about what an "alpha wolf" is that are mistaken.
| If someone doesn't have those ideas and "alpha wolf"
| doens't mean those things to them, then fine. The article
| doesn't get much into what the role of this dominant wolf
| is like, I suspect there are other popular but mistaken
| ideas there too as well.
|
| Usually when I hear people talking about "alpha wolf" or
| similar, the idea is that the individual gets to this
| position by competing with other individuals, and then
| winning by using strength or aggression. It's that part the
| article is suggesting is a myth.
|
| As you say, words are human inventions and people use them
| in different ways. If that's not the way you are using
| "alpha wolf", then the article may not address how you are
| using it.
| tspike wrote:
| I think TFA addresses this pretty clearly. The idea of the
| alpha wolf is that within a pack, through a series of fights,
| the most aggressive and assertive animal rises to a leadership
| position. In the wild, what's actually observed is that the
| leadership positions are the parents, with infighting an
| extremely rare phenomenon.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| t344344 wrote:
| > Mech had relied on research done on captive wolves.
|
| But it describes wolves in captivity pretty well! Most references
| about "alpha" I seen were from a dog behavior. Pack of dogs has a
| hierarchy and follows orders.
|
| Pick-up originated from dog training. Maybe that is how this term
| got applied to people.
| avereveard wrote:
| > When Mech published his book, even after more than a decade of
| field research, he had only once come within fifteen feet of a
| free-range wolf
|
| > while he was on Ellesmere that "it dawned on me the need to
| tell the world about this alpha stuff. Because it's nonsense.
|
| so basically both the original and the myth are one anectdote
| each? he even say:
|
| > It makes no sense up here.
|
| how this special community of wolves generalize to other? article
| doesn't care enough to say.
|
| does the researcher say at some point?
|
| is there anyone doing actual research with data that can be
| repeated, instead of deriving principles from natural
| observations? I thought we were past Aristoteles&co.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| > is there anyone doing actual research with data that can be
| repeated, instead of deriving principles from natural
| observations?
|
| I can't imagine a way to do a controlled reproducible
| experiment looking at the social behaviour of wild animals.
| It's not like any of this could be observed in a lab
| environment.
|
| There are a lot of subjects that can only be studied through
| natural observation.
| avereveard wrote:
| natural observations can range from personal diaries to
| rigorous data collection at scale with cross validation and
| identification of confounding factors to the point where
| theories can be tested against the data from the field
|
| the wording of the article and your reply hints at this
| research being of the first type.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I can't imagine a way to do a controlled reproducible
| experiment_
|
| The question isn't "what would happen if", but "what's the
| behavior as exhibited", so you don't need to do a "controlled
| experiment". You just need to observe and accurately describe
| the kind of pack dynamics and behavior seen.
|
| Observation is enough for this, and there are tons of studies
| done exactly that way on animals, some of them lasting
| decades, from gorillas to meerkats and from dolphins to
| mice...
| t-3 wrote:
| > how this special community of wolves generalize to other?
| article doesn't care enough to say.
|
| Parents and children. Wolf packs are just a family of related
| animals.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > is there anyone doing actual research with data that can be
| repeated
|
| It's impossible to have a controlled environment to study a
| phenomenon in an uncontrolled environment. As soon as you put
| these wolves in captivity, you're not measuring the same thing.
| And good luck repeating an experiment with wild wolves in
| nature.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Did you read the full article? It says that current researchers
| don't ascribe to there being a struggle to become alpha
| male/female (long before Mech tried to get his booked to be
| stopped publishing). There is long paragraphs about how packs
| are really organised, which are presumably based on scientific
| studies. However in laypeople the myth still persists.
|
| As a side note, you seem to dismiss research through
| observation of natural behavior. How else are you going to do
| it?
| avereveard wrote:
| > presumably
|
| that's the whole point. everyone seem to presume, nobody
| seems to bring data. few special cases here, few special
| cases there.
| biorach wrote:
| dammit, you've really got a bee in your bonnet...
|
| The article is summarizing a lifetime of observation-based
| research
|
| https://wolf.org/wolf-info/basic-wolf-info/in-depth-
| resource...
| neogodless wrote:
| > The researchers looked at how infection in a wolf affected its
| decision to disperse and its assumption of leadership roles.
| Toxoplasmosis proved to be a strong predictor for both actions.
|
| _Toxoplasma gondii_ never ceases to amaze and scare me. I 'm one
| of the many humans with an identified infection of it (over 25
| years ago.)
|
| Also super interesting part of this article:
|
| > "We found that even more important than pack size was whether a
| pack had an old individual, male or female," she said. At six
| years old, a Yellowstone wolf is considered an elder--only about
| one in five lives to that age. "If they have one or two older
| individuals, they are more likely to win--which was not what we'd
| expected to find."
| saghm wrote:
| > "If they have one or two older individuals, they are more
| likely to win--which was not what we'd expected to find."
|
| This doesn't sound that crazy; maybe the ones able to live that
| are the ones in packs that are strong enough to win all the
| time.
| thechao wrote:
| Cohen the Barbarian style, I guess? An old barbarian is a
| deadly barbarian!
| naikrovek wrote:
| > Cohen the Barbarian
|
| this example of autocorrect made me laugh out loud for the
| first time in days.
|
| please do not correct it.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cohen
|
| If you want more laughs, check out the books ;)
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I think it was intended?
| colechristensen wrote:
| I'm interested in some recent research that shows a blood
| pressure drug, guanabenz, which helps clear latent taxo
| infections.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| There is a myth of the myth of the alpha wolf. Onse in several
| years a media outlet desides to tell people about "the myth of
| the alpha wolf" that people supposedly believe in. And it never
| makes sense besause few to no people believe in or care about
| "alpha wolves". A cursory search on Google and Reddit reveals
| that most people who talk about alpha wolves either talk about a
| metalcore band or present a yet another article that "dispels"
| the "myth" of the alpha wolf. Sometimes an article proclaims to
| speak about "the myth of the alpha male", but it always turns out
| to be a bait-and-switch for an article that talks about "the myth
| of the alpha wolf".
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The terminology morphed to p people (alpha males) despite
| absolutely no indication that it applies to wolves or humans
| (except prisons). That's the myth.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Presumably, scientists (David Mech in case of wolves and
| Frans de Waal in case of humans) aren't dumb or mischievous,
| so they wouldn't make up something there was no indication
| of. There probably was an indication that they based their
| opinions on.
|
| Maybe there is a myth of "alpha males", but the article
| doesn't expose it, it doesn't even talk about it beyond a
| single sentence.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| > And it never makes sense besause few to no people believe in
| or care about "alpha wolves".
|
| The last fifty or so years of western literature beg to differ.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What literature do you refer to?
| Blackthorn wrote:
| On a literal level: pretty much any supernatural story
| involving a werewolf.
|
| On a metaphorical level: pick your favorite male-focused
| self help pop psychologist. There's a reason the phrase
| "sigma male grindset" was coined to make fun of these
| people.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What does it have to do with caring about alpha wolves?
| Blackthorn wrote:
| If there was an overall cultural ambivalence about the
| concept of alpha wolves, they would not appear with such
| frequency in western literature.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Why wouldn't they? What does any of that have to do with
| alpha wolves?
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Are you seriously going to claim that "few to no people
| believe in or care about "alpha wolves"" given the
| enormous representation of the concept in the last fifty
| years of western literature?
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I honestly have never seen "the enormous representation
| of the concept ["alpha wolf"] in the last fifty years of
| western literature", yes. In fact, I don't see much
| representation of wolves in the western literature, let
| alone particular types of wolves. Even such exciting
| creatures as werewolves seem to be far less popular than
| vampires.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Google Ngram Viewer shows some initial interest starting
| around 1965, plateauing until '74, relatively low until
| '87, and rising pretty steadily from there (with a small
| dip in growth around '03, and a _meteoric_ rise since
| then). This seems to support the argument of it being
| common in western literature of the last 50 years.
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=alpha+wolf&
| yea...
|
| TV Tropes also has a good collection of occurrences in
| popculture, including literature.
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlphaAndBetaW
| olv...
| karaterobot wrote:
| I thought the "alpha male" idea, as applied to humans, was an
| analogy to the concept of alpha wolves (as opposed to dominance
| hierarchies in non-human primates). You always hear about the
| pack leader, or the lone wolf, never the alpha macaque, right?
|
| So, dispelling that myth in wolves may be an attempt to shake
| off the pseudoscientific idea that this concept can be used to
| describe human social structures.
|
| Of course, not being based in science in the first place, a
| scientific appeal has no chance of changing anything. Which is
| why it gets rewritten every few years.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| That's not a scientific appeal, that's just a weird argument
| based on a sort of an etymological fallacy.
| deepzn wrote:
| Like "The Wolf of Wall Street"
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| It wasn't even called "The Alpha Wolf of Wall Street"!?
| "Wolf" just means a fierce and predatory person because
| wolves were for a long time the main threat to livestock
| and people, cf. "a wolf in sheep's clothing", a phrase
| which origin goes back to Bible.
| guilhas wrote:
| Lions do have a alpha and primates right? It might be just
| extrapolation
|
| But I think there should be enough public wildlife wolf
| documentaries and videos to be presented as data on how wolves
| live or others
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Wolves are wonderful animals. I think they got a bad reputation
| because farmers really don't like it when they kill off their
| livestock. But there are a bunch of tiktok channels that show
| that wolves are basically large dogs, and that you really don't
| need to fear them when they're cared for.
|
| https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRvP7g42/
|
| https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRvPKqCk/
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Wolves are significantly different from dogs. They don't form
| bonds with humans or other species, they aren't dependent on
| humans for food, they're true carnivores, they're better
| problem solvers than dogs, they have smaller litters once a
| year, their packs are more cohesive family units, they're shy,
| they don't play past the juvenile stage. Wolves and Dogs are
| like a Hell's Angel and an actor playing a Hell's Angel.
|
| You don't have to fear wolf attacks because we just aren't
| something they are familiar with, but if they're really hungry
| they'd have no qualms over turning a couple humans into lunch,
| and you can't just scare them off.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's a famous experiment I just saw on _Nature_ again,
| where two puppies, one dog and one wolf, both raised
| identically around humans, are given a test:
|
| Find the treat that the human points at. The dog puppy
| follows the cue, while the wolf does not.
|
| That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the wolf, but
| it's genetically less likely to defer and learn from the
| human.
| pxc wrote:
| I've seen similar research that shows the converse, as
| well: wolves are more likely than dogs to learn how to
| solve puzzles by watching _other canines_ work the puzzles.
|
| It was in some dog documentary on Netflix. Wish I could
| remember the name!
|
| Anyway I think that tendency to attune to us, generalized
| to other contexts, is part of what makes dogs so wonderful.
| It's not just a matter of being able to direct them
| explicitly, but the fact that they're interested in what
| we're doing, how we're feeling, what we want, etc.
|
| All of that varies with each individual dog, of course. But
| it's obvious that generally, wolves and humans aren't as
| fit for each other as dogs and humans are.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Yeah. I'd love to go on a wolf-watching trip, like I did
| a grizzly-watching trip on Kodiak Island. We _made_ dogs
| out of wolves via selective breeding, albeit not always
| consciously.
| stormfather wrote:
| Ah so the dogs have instruction fine tuning.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "farmers really don't like it when they kill off their
| livestock."
|
| You say that like it's shameful for them to feel that way.
|
| Pet owners really don't like it when wolves kill off their dogs
| & cats, either.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| We have coyotes in the suburb I live in. They will stalk
| pets, and if you leave them out overnight say good bye to
| fluffy.
|
| The people who have lived here a while pay no nevermind. But
| new locals always fill nextdoor with coyote sightings. I
| mean, yeah, you can hear them basically every night.
| taco_philips wrote:
| I don't see anything in what you quoted about how the farmer
| should be ashamed to feel that way. I didn't read it that way
| at all.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Yeah. It's always interesting to see how people fill in the
| blanks.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You don't? How about "I think they got a bad reputation
| because farmers really don't like it when they kill off
| their livestock."
|
| so, "bad reputation" is unfortunate, X caused it, but it's
| unwarranted to read that as "X is unfortunate"? It seems
| like a reasonable inference.
| vehementi wrote:
| It's because the person went out of their way to say that
| the bad reputation is because of the farmers' feelings,
| rather than just the fact that wolves kill the livestock.
| Compare:
|
| > He went to jail for hitting her
|
| > He went to jail because she didn't like that he hit her
|
| This makes it sound like she would or should sometimes like
| to be hit, rather than being straightforwardly the victim
| of a crime, or straightforwardly because the person
| committed a crime
| pxc wrote:
| > Pet owners really don't like it when wolves kill off their
| dogs & cats, either.
|
| Right. I have some affection for wolves and coyotes because
| of their resemblance and relatiom to domestic dogs... but I
| also don't want them near my home any more than they have to
| be, and I avoid them at parks, because they will 100% kill
| and eat dogs like mine. They do it all the time.
| sdwr wrote:
| The wolf in that first video didn't sound happy to be there...
| pxc wrote:
| Some dogs, notably rottweilers, make similar vocalizations
| even when relaxed. Search for 'rottie rumble' to find clips
| with examples.
|
| I don't know anything about wolves really, but with dogs,
| most individual components of body language are pretty
| ambiguous. For example, - many dogs will
| rapidly wag their tails just before getting into a vicious
| fight (it doesn't just mean 'happy') - dogs will
| generally bare teeth as a warning/threat, but some will also
| show their teeth as a greeting (Google 'heeler smile')
| - some stress/calming signals (e.g., pulling ears back or
| lowered tail) can occur as normal parts of safe, mutual play
|
| To get a sense of what a dog is feeling and how it might act,
| you really have to integrate all of its body language into a
| single context.
|
| All of that is to say that if someone who works at a
| respectable wolf habitat/rescue tells me that a growl-y
| vocalization from a wolf is not always aggressive, I don't
| have a hard time believing that.
|
| (I'd love to learn more about wolf body language and how it
| differs from that of domestic dogs!)
| sdwr wrote:
| Agree in theory, my read on that particular situation is
| that the human was shading arrogant/taunting, and the male
| was a bit jealous verging towards pissed.
|
| My dog has played a few times with a rescue mutt (bit of
| rottie in there?) who growls pretty loud in the heat of the
| moment. Was frightening to hear, but shes not aggressive at
| all.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It's why I hope they'll be accepted back into society
| someday. The risks seem minimal with proper care, and right
| now their options are captivity or wilderness. But they're
| where dogs came from; a few generations of selective breeding
| to reduce adrenaline response would do the trick.
|
| But the growls are kind of cute, and probably sound a lot
| more ominous than they are.
| https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRv5LQGC/
| johndhi wrote:
| What? Wolves have massively more powerful bites than dogs,
| right?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Humans have one of the most deadly bites too. Just
| because something is dangerous, it's tempting to shun it.
| But the danger is relative to the frequency of problems.
|
| (If this is a "citation needed" situation:
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-human-
| bites/b...)
| pxc wrote:
| Probably more worrisome to me is taking for granted the
| way we've bred dogs to be gentle, calm, good-natured,
| etc. Most people don't do much to train their pet dogs or
| even learn to communicate with them. We more or less get
| away with that, societally, because dogs are insanely
| good-natured. Dogs give us so much 'for free'. I think
| without that, like when people just keep wolves as pets,
| things look a LOT dicier.
| copymoro wrote:
| wilderness?
|
| there's no wilderness... it's all somebody's backyard.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| True, but 28 years ago they were reintroduced into
| Yellowstone. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRv5NTNU/
| dkarl wrote:
| That's a bizarre standard to judge an animal by. Do you think
| bears and moose, or wolves not habituated to humans, are less
| "wonderful" because you can't cuddle with them?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I think so. If you can't cuddle with an animal then they're
| significantly less wonderful. Majestic, perhaps, but there's
| nothing like fluffy cuddles.
|
| Bears are sometimes pretty cool. There's a lady on tiktok
| that scratches one behind the ears with a rake whenever it
| shows up. Which is apparently a frequent thing for her.
| https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRv5qd55/
|
| Somehow she trained it to sit...
| https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRv5yDQk/
|
| But I don't think bears are domesticatable through selective
| breeding, whereas there's some evidence that wolves are.
| standardUser wrote:
| Not all animals are able to be domesticated, right? Wolves
| are, so something must separate them from other un-
| domesticatable animals.
| culi wrote:
| One major criticism of invasion biology is that the definition
| of "invasive" is most often an assessment of impact on
| commercial interests rather than ecological impacts. There are
| many situations where these are actually diametrically opposed
| definitions. Dandelions for example are extremely "invasive"
| but actually benefit local ecosystems by loosening soils and
| reducing topsoil loss. Because our agricultural practices are
| dependent on sterilized, lifeless soils these soil protectors
| are then seen as pests. This is actually the case with many
| "weeds".
|
| The most damaging thing you could ever do to soil is expose it
| to direct sunlight. The whole point of annuals is that they
| come up to protect the soil from the harmful radiation that
| kills the soil ecosystems. That's why annuals seeds can survive
| in soils for sometimes even decades. They're not meant to
| displace anything. They're meant to be there when there's some
| sort of "disturbance" (in nature this could be a fire or a
| mudslide or a windstorm that knocks over some important shade-
| providing trees, but in Western agriculture this is basically
| all of our farming) and kickstart the process of ecological
| succession
|
| If you let your lawn get overgrown by weeds it might look
| terrible the first year (tho I personally think it looks much
| more beautiful than the green deserts we spend so much money
| trying to maintain). But the second year you'll start to get
| some perennials and a lot less of the weedy annuals. Maybe some
| grasses will start. Eventually the soils will have developed so
| that they transformed from bacteria-dominated to fungal
| dominated and mycorrhizal networks will allow much more hardy
| plants to grow including shrubs and eventually even trees.
| These advanced soils hold up to 50x as much water and plants
| who've made mycorrhizal associations are much more resistant to
| pests, droughts, freezes, etc and have access to a much larger
| network of nutrients. So that means you'll have to spend much
| less time maintaining, watering, fertilizing, etc. In fact
| fertilization with nitrogen impedes the formation of
| mycorrhizal associations so, if your goal is a long term
| garden, "leave it the fuck alone" is actually a very effective
| strategy.
|
| Those weedy annuals depend on nitrogen that comes in easy to
| access forms but fungal dominated soils tend to have nitrogen
| in harder to access forms like ammonium (mainly due to the
| advancement of the soil food web into more complex organisms)
| so that means that the "weeds" will eventually work themselves
| out of a job (or at least until the next major "disturbance").
|
| It's really a problem that solves itself and the more you fight
| that harder you need to fight.
|
| I might've strayed from the original point but I think there's
| a similar lesson with wolves. Wolves drastically decrease the
| number of disease vectors (e.g. rats or deer with ticks) in an
| ecosystem and also balance out other predators that take their
| place like birds of prey. The more we fight them the more we
| have to come up with solutions for all the side effects of
| their absence (e.g. large deer populations leading to reduced
| vegetation that stabilizes river banks or the increase in
| diseases)
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| I'm sorry but they're demonstrably not, there have been
| numerous studies that show domesticated dogs and wolves have
| significant evolutionary divergence.
|
| Even wolves that have been crossbred over several generations
| with dogs to get a more wolflike appearance tend to be
| exceptionally difficult to manage, have been well-known to
| attack other pets, can be very destructive, and ultimately most
| people want them because of how they look.
|
| People who believe that wolves will reciprocate human affection
| and somehow magically ignore all of their instincts are people
| who tend to overly anthropomorphize what are at heart wild
| animals.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I'm usually more measured in my comments here, but oh well.
|
| This is horse shit. Do NOT interact with wolves. They're
| beautiful and majestic. They also absolutely don't deserve the
| damage that can come from food from humans or habituation, and
| you don't deserve the risk (from attack, from disease, from a
| park ranger who's pissed that yet ANOTHER tourist is ignoring
| all of the postings to leave wild animals alone.)
|
| Bison near you? Get the fuck away. Wolf? Get the fuck away.
| Chipmunk? Seriously, stop interacting with wildlife. If you
| feed wildlife, you're an asshole. If wildlife is put down
| because a TikTok video got you attacked, you're an asshole. If
| yet another bear is relocated because you helped habituate it,
| you're an asshole. (And if you're wondering, there are usually
| a lot of laws around how people shouldn't interact with
| wildlife. For good reason.)
|
| Leave no trace. Let wildlife be wild. Leave it the fuck alone.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Hear, hear. It's wonderful that we still have these majestic
| creatures on Earth, but part of what's so wonderful is that
| _they were here before we were._
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Well said but another statement is missing :
|
| Move to a new house near wild fauna and flora ? You're an
| asshole, leave it the fuck alone.
|
| Expending suburbs and creating new one is taking over some
| life territory.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| You set up a straw man and berated it about a bunch of things
| I didn't say, just so you know.
|
| Can you find a quote you disagree with, and then explain why
| you disagree with it? That usually clarifies situations like
| this.
|
| For example, the "when cared for" is an important qualifier
| in my statement.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Sure, how about "wolves are basically large dogs" ? That is
| provably false. If you deny that, you're just ignorant of
| the research.
|
| Dogs might have descended from wolves and can even
| interbreed with them, but they're not the same.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| At a basic level, wolves are closer to dogs than they are
| to humans or bears. "Basically" doesn't mean
| "equivalent."
|
| I'm trying to let the insults roll off me, but saying I'm
| horse shit and ignorant for two things I didn't say is a
| bit much. I think that's enough HN for the day. Have a
| nice weekend.
| elcomet wrote:
| The TikToks you linked are examples of what the parent
| comment is talking about: people interacting with wild
| animals as if they were pets.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| He runs a wildlife sanctuary. The video takes place
| within that context. I should probably have clarified
| that bit, but I thought the fences made it clear.
| [deleted]
| privong wrote:
| This was a nice, deeper dive into this topic. I'd recently come
| across the idea the the pack structure with an "alpha" wolf
| wasn't scientifically accurate while reading "Inside of a
| Dog"[0]. The book obviously focuses more on things from the dog
| side, contrasting them with wolves, but did include a brief
| discussion on the common incorrect thinking of wolf families as
| being "alpha-dominated packs". It did mention the Mech and
| Schenkel work, including nothing that Mech was up front and
| outspoken about the fact that his original published findings on
| the topic was found to be incorrect.
|
| [0] https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Inside-of-a-
| Dog/Alexa...
| brindy wrote:
| [flagged]
| 462436347 wrote:
| >"It turned out all that stuff was mostly wrong," Mech said. In
| 2022, his publisher agreed to stop printing the book. Yet,
| although field biologists no longer use the terms "alpha" and
| "beta," they have proved too useful for humans to drop--now we
| use them in relation to our own groupings and conflicts.
|
| Ok, forget about wolves. What about non-human great apes, like
| chimpanzees or mountain gorillas, much closer to us genetically
| than canids? Are their societies not hierarchical, polygynous,
| and alpha-led?
| PKop wrote:
| Of course they are, but this narrative they're pushing is
| ideological/political propaganda masquerading as science.
|
| >they have proved too useful for humans to drop--now we use
| them in relation to our own groupings and conflicts
|
| >Are their societies not hierarchical, polygynous, and alpha-
| led?
|
| Yes, and most dominant human civilizations have been too. This
| and the usefulness of the concept in understanding human power
| relations are the sort of uncomfortable or inconvenient truths
| certain people seem to be trying to obscure by muddling
| reality.
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