When a recent piece purporting to dispel the "myth" of canine dominance appeared on Psychology Today, ethologist Marc Bekoff quickly stepped in. Wolves and other animals, including humans , display social dominance, he notes; it just isn't always easy to boil dominant behavior down to simple explanations.
Dominant behavior and dominance relationships can be highly situational, and can vary greatly from individual to individual even within the same species. It's not the entire concept of wolves displaying social dominance that was dispelled, just the simple hierarchical pack structure. In response to the same piece, Mech pointed to a article he published detailing his observance of an adult gray wolf repeatedly pinning and straddling a male pack mate over the course of six and a half minutes.
As research on wolves, both captive and wild, continues, we develop a more complex, nuanced picture of wolf behavior. But the easy notion of the "alpha wolf" still persists. Certainly in entertainment it has made for some nice stories; plenty of books and movies center around the notion of wolf—and werewolf—ranks.
However, the outmoded idea of the "alpha wolf" still has some legs in a real-world area: dog training. Just as, more than six decades ago, Schenkel extrapolated his wolf studies and applied them to domestic dogs, so too have many carried the notion of the "alpha wolf" over to dog training.
Certainly, just as parent wolves hold dominance over their cubs and human parents hold dominance over their children, owners hold dominance over their dogs. Until my pup gets himself a credit card and a pair of opposable thumbs and stops dissolving into delighted wiggles every time I tell him what a good little man he is , I'm pretty much the boss in our relationship.
But some trainers take the idea of pack rank to the extreme; dog owners are given a laundry list of rules of how to maintain alpha status in all aspects of their relationship: Don't let your dog walk through the door before you do. Don't let her win a game of tug. Don't let him eat before you do.
These two animals lead the pack during a hunt and often eat first when a kill is made. A luna wolf is another term for the alpha female in the pack, which is the counterpart of the alpha male and is the main female. A pack of wolves usually comprises a dominant alpha pair; an individual or a couple following in importance, and most likely to replace the current alphas referred to as the beta pair ; next in line, are individuals in the middle ranks, these are followed by one or more wolves of the lowest omega rank.
Background — omega male The alpha is the individual with the highest rank, who is usually the first to eat and the first to mate. Its subordinates correspondingly fall into four other categories, described in descending order of importance as beta, gamma, delta and omega.
In an amazing twist in their standard game, Kamots was allowing himself to be the victim! As I grew to know these wolves I realized that this was a regular occurrence, one that bears no scientific explanation other than the fact that sometimes it is fun to be the one getting chased.
To me, it implies that there is a lot more going on in the inner life of wolves than we can imagine. In humans, an older, stronger brother might let a younger brother pin him in a mock wrestling match, feigning defeat and letting his younger sibling celebrate victory.
Both know who the dominant one is, but it is fun to reverse the roles. Witnessing scenes like this, the only interpretation I could make was that Kamots and Lakota genuinely cared for each other. Some years later, while scouting for wolves along the Yukon River with Jim, I watched from a small airplane as a pack played a game of tag in the deep snow.
The attention he would draw to himself could sometimes result in a full-on mobbing. It was painful to watch his hopeful expectations dissolve, fear spring into his eyes, and his entire posture change. Group rallies were another risky time for Lakota.
Often the pack gathered together and howled, as if to celebrate its solidarity. The real reason for this ritual is unknown. Sometimes it appeared that Kamots would purposefully start to howl, apparently calling the pack together and reminding everyone of his leadership.
Other times the rallies seemed more spontaneous, with a spontaneous howl bubbling up inside one of the wolves, then bursting forth uncontrollably.
When one wolf began to howl, the others would quickly join in and assemble around Kamots. As the rally grew in intensity, the wolves often displayed their dominance, sparring, growling and pinning each other to the ground. These were dangerous times for the omega. Regardless of the bickering that went on between the mid-ranking wolves, Amani and Motomo, most of the aggression was transferred to Lakota. All the same, he would often be there, lending his voice to the group howl.
I would try to find an occasion when a wolf was howling more or less by himself, rather than right in the middle of the group. This was easier with Lakota because he often stood on the fringe, howling, but trying to keep a low profile. When I first recorded his howl, I was amazed at what was coming through my headphones.
Lakota, eyes shut and head thrown back, was just pouring his heart out. His rich, mournful voice soared into the evening and hung in the air for what seemed like forever. Calling wolves alpha and beta animals comes from research on wolves in captivity, says Barbara Zimmermann.
Then there may be several rank levels, beta, gamma and so on. Most wolf packs simply consist of two parents and their puppies. The group may also include one- to three-year-old offspring that have not yet headed out on their own. Rudolf Schenkel wrote about social structure and body language among wolves in Schenkel studied wolves at the Basel Zoo in Switzerland, where up to ten wolves were kept together in an area of 10 by 20 metres.
He saw that the highest ranked female and male formed a pair, and that the hierarchy could change. According to another well-known wolf researcher, David Mech, it was Schenkel's work that gave rise to the idea of the alpha wolf, according to The International Wolf Center website. As early as , Schenkel mentioned that it was possible that wild wolf packs consisted of a monogamous pair, their puppies and one- to two-year-old pups. But this information was overlooked. Her dissertation describes research on pack structure in wolves, and how it in turn affected views on dog training.
Another Norwegian, Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, also contributed with important insights. Schjelderup-Ebbe established the term "pecking order " in the s to describe relationships among chickens. This describes how chickens can be aggressive towards birds below them in the social hierarchy, but not towards those above them. It had great influence on the whole view of science at that time, at least in research that had to do with living organisms.
A great deal of research was done on the wolf's pack structure in the s and s, but this was mainly on wolves in captivity, Zimmermann said. For example, Erik Zimen, a Swede, worked with social organization among wolves in captivity. These wolves were not necessarily related and were kept in an unnaturally small area. It was a success. Mech has written on his website that he repeatedly asked the publisher to stop printing the book because much of the information is outdated — including the concept behind the alpha wolf.
Nevertheless, the book is still being sold. But by the time he realized that this was a mistake, the term had already taken root in the literature. In addition, you have a number of other well-known names who published research based on animals in zoos. The military used punishment as a training tool. Some of the methods involved physical punishment, such as taking the puppy by the scruff of the neck and shaking it.
These ideas became less widespread in the dog training literature throughout the s.
0コメント