YSK that there is no such thing as an "alpha wolf" - eviltoast

Some of the many articles about it:

The notion that wolves fight amongst each other and the strongest becomes the “alpha” and the weakest is the “omega” and all that, is a misconception that has been debunked ages ago, and even the author of the study who called them “alphas” in the first place is pleading with his old publisher to stop printing the dang book already so this misconception can finally die out.

Wolf packs are more or less just families. One “breeding pair” and their pups, which often stay with their parents way into adulthood.

      • twelvefloatinghands@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Honestly, that feels like giving them too much credit. Chimps are fucking terrifying. The more I learn about them, the more I wonder “jesus fucking christ, how badass/insane was Jane Goodall?!”. Those things are the closest things to real demons I’ve ever heard about.

        Edit: well, aside from particularly unhinged humans

    • orichalcum00@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah but bonobos are close to chimpanzees and humans too yet they have totally different culture than chimpanzees.

      In fact, bonobos used to be a subspecies of chimpanzees but because that nonviolent culture, they’ve become their own species.

      • credit crazy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Those kinds of animals have always kinda fascinated me with how it just makes you wonder if there’s a element of genomes when it comes to your personality

        • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          No idea about personality traits, but there have been studies about what kind of human behavior, especially facial expressions, might be “pre programmed” in our genes. For example, rolling your eyes when you’re frustrated with someone, or raising your eyebrows when you are surprised - that’s something even most blind people do instinctively, despite never having seen it / never learned it from others.

      • twelvefloatinghands@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Ah yes, but have you considered the gargantuan confirmation bias of anyone willing to map debunked wolf social dynamics onto humans?

        • orichalcum00@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yes but you implied that even if there’s no alpha male in wolves, there’s alpha male in chimps and while we can’t apply wolf’s power dynamic to humans, we can with chimps because they’re a closer species to us. I wanted to point out that there’s another close relatives of us and chimps (the bonobos) who are not actually violent so we still can’t justify male violence on humans because we find it in chimps.

    • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      Not really. In chimps, if you want to have the highest status as a male, you have to form coalitions of friendship with other relatively high-status males. Chimp males who try to simply beat the shit out of everyone else without forming coalitions, tend to get “dealt with” prison style where the rest of the troop’s males show up 4 or 5 deep and either beat the shit out of them, or fucking kill them.

      Chimps are metal as fuck in this regard.

      That said, while it’s true that we get a lot of insight into human behavior by studying non-human primate behavior, it’s not the case, nor does anyone who matters argue as such, that human behavior is or should be precisely analogous to what we see in our close relatives.