The alfa wolf fallacy and forced behaviors.

In 1970, David Mech published “The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” which quickly became a bestseller and a foundational text about wolf habits and society, read both by scientists and laypeople.

A few years later, Mech attempted to halt the publication of the book because studies had evolved, and the section on pack order and the concept of the alpha wolf as a “top dog” ruling a group of similarly aged compatriots was particularly misleading.

What exactly happened?

At the time of the publication of Mech’s book, all studies on wolves referred to Rudolf Schenkel, who had observed groups of captive wolves for ten years where new individuals were periodically introduced. In 1947, Schenkel described the dominant animal with the term "alpha wolf." Schenkel's theory proposed a linear dominance hierarchy, both male and female, ranging from the “alpha wolf” theoretically down to the “omega wolf”, pushing group members to fight to improve their rank continuously.

In the 1970s, new technologies were introduced to study wolves in their natural context by tracking their movements with radio signals; the outcome of these studies was a game changer.

In essence, there is no alpha male or female; the wolf pack is a family, consisting of a father, a mother, and their offspring. The founding parent couple remains stable over time, and although strangers may occasionally join, the wolf pack is formed by blood relatives. The pups look like adults at the age of five months, making it easy to confuse them. Some leave the group around nine months old, others do so by three years old, but sooner or later all of them if they survive, will fund a new pack without challenging their parents.

In the case of wolves, Mech asserts that it doesn’t even make sense to talk about alpha males and females as there is no fight in the pack for the dominant position.

The idea of continuous fights within the pack for the dominant position and hierarchical lines from alpha to omega is not realistic for any species. Since individuals in the wild are free to move and are not confined to a limited space, they belong to a group as long as it suits them. Even in species with relatively long dominance hierarchies, there is always a limit to the disadvantages an individual can tolerate within a group.

It was only in 2022 that the publisher agreed to stop printing the 1970 book, but the concepts of “alpha,” “beta,” etc., have proven too useful for explaining hierarchies within groups and conflicts among animals and humans and are still widely used.

The mistake in studying wolf behavior is not an isolated case.

Observing animals in the wild and focusing on how each individual relates to other group members is an innovation by Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch, which earned them the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973. The award referred to their demonstration that the individual and social behaviors of animals are the result of a complex interaction between genetic and environmental factors.

Before that, the scientific study of animals took place in laboratories or "controlled" environments, which allowed for significant findings. The breakthrough in animal studies to understand human behavior occurred in 1902 when the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov published the results of his studies on dogs. Pavlov discovered that behaviors are responses to a stimulus and demonstrated that they could be extensively conditioned. This discovery provided new opportunities for psychology and the study of human behaviors, which risked being confined to mental disorders.

Another example of forced behavior in captive animals is inbreeding.

Exogamy is one of nature's fundamental rules underlying many complex dynamics, including the dispersal of young from groups to promote DNA mixing. The fact that environmental pressures can trigger such "unnatural" behaviors as mating within relatives provides interesting managerial insights.

When we talk about "survival of the fittest," we mean that the context selects behaviors and not vice versa. When environmental conditions change, only a few highly flexible species may adapt; most depart and are replaced by other species with characteristics more functional to the new context.

This is particularly insightful in management because it suggests that we should prioritize working on the culture and values of an organization, facilitating the natural selection of individuals who exhibit the desired behaviors and making the environment less attractive to those who exhibit behaviors we intend to discourage.

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Main references:

·????? L.D. Mech. ?– Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs (1999)

·????? M. Celentano et al. – Konrad Lorenz cent’anni dopo – l’eredità scientifica del padre dell’etologia (2007)