this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

What about that bloke who started all this stuff about alpha and beta wolves?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

His life’s work was attempting to get everyone to know that his initial work offered incorrect conclusions and that he had later disproved it. He’s actually a hero.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

Yeah, respect to the dude

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well he made bad research, then disproved it, but couldn't bottle back all the incels who ran with that shit

[–] QuantumSparkles 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Part of the irony being that even if it were true, there is no reason to make assumptions about human behavior and social structure based on other animals, especially… wild canines? Wtf? There’s a lot of different pack/grouping types throughout the animal kingdom—if anything it would make sense to compare humans to other apes, but at the end of the day it’s still a totally different species that also lacks the social complexity as well as culture and lifestyles humans are capable of because of our higher intelligence. We have some really fucking stupid cultural hang-ups

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

being human is about communicating and learning new behaviors. Both of those take work and practice, so there's selective pressure for a narrative that justifies not putting it in. If there hadn't been the alpha/wolf thing then we'd just be having this conversation about some other silly story that served the same function.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Inside you there are two wolves, my friend. One is society and the other is society. We live in a society.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 20 hours ago

inside you there are two wolves, they are crucial for keeping the deer population under control

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

I think it fits.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Wait, that isn't true? I never heard about beta wolves, but i learned about alpha wolves in a public school.

Are we talking about the same thing?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago

Yeah. It turns out that the "Alpha" and "Omega" wolves are just... The parents of the pack. It's got nothing to do with the Alpha being macho or assertive or anything like how it's been portrayed for decades.

The researcher who first published his faulty observations has been trying to correct the public consciousness for years, but it's really hard to undo something that was taught so widely

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Okay yeah, that's about what I remembered. The parents leading and the children leaving when they become adults, thus not endangering the position of the parents.

I guess I just somehow mandela-effected the term "alpha" into there

But funny that wolves have social systems closer to humans than some ape species with their silverbacks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Oh yeah, we definitely form close knit family and community units with dispersed hierarchy instead of giving all the bananas and power to a small handful of apes who can then impose their will on everyone else.....