Debunking the Alpha Wolf: Why We Need to Rethink Our Understanding of Wolf Packs
From One Green Planet:
The alpha wolf idea comes from outdated terminology from research on captive wolf packs in the mid-20th century. Wildlife biologists, like L. David Mech, once used terms such as alpha and beta to describe the pecking order in wolf packs. In the 1970s, Mech used the alpha wolf nomenclature in a classic book of wolf biology, The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species. However, as new research has come to light, Mech has pushed back against the term, and The Wolf was taken out of print in 2022.
