I started out reading a New Yorker piece called “The Myth of the Alpha Wolf” largely because of my last name. I didn’t really expect where it was going to end up. (For the lucky few of you with a subscription, you can read it here. A summary is below.) The upshot? Science doesn’t care what you believe. Don’t believe me? Well, it’s on a t-shirt, so it must be true – right?
The year I was born (1958) a guy named David Mech came up with the notion of the Alpha Wolf – and more generally, the formulation of how wolf societies are organized and maintained – while doing research for his doctoral thesis in wildlife ecology at Purdue. As it turns out, a lot of his ideas came from studying wolves in captivity. And also as it turns out, much of what he believed at the time to be true of wolves in general was rubbish, at least as it relates to packs in the wild. So much so, in fact, that after the introduction of radio collar tracking and the resultant increased understanding of wild wolf behavior and societies, he asked the publisher of his 1970 best-selling book on the subject to stop printing it. That’s a pretty strong endorsement for a changed view of the world: Y’think?
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The fact is, a concept like “Alpha Wolf,” whether true or not, is very compelling to us humans. That means it takes on a descriptive life of its own quite apart from any basis in actual fact, either for wolves, or for us. I won’t bore you with all the details. For that, you’ll have to click the link and read it for yourself. But the truth is a lot more fantastical than fiction. And it follows a pattern more commonplace in the annals of the history of science than most people realize.
Just as (to pick one random example) peptic ulcers were once thought to be the result of too much stomach acid, and instead were found to be the product of a rogue gut bacteria, so too with wolves splitting off from their packs of origin. Turns out, it’s not family fights over who gets to be “Alpha” that tells the tale. Instead it has to do with a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. I won’t spoil your fun by telling you exactly how all this works. But if you’ve ever suffered from a peptic ulcer and got treated with antacids (not very effective), you’ll be more likely to appreciate the unlikely link if your condition was cured with antibiotics (near 100% effective). A lot more likely, at least, than if you just happened to watch Leo DiCaprio cavorting across the silver screen in the Wolf of Wall Street.
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Bottom line, you’re welcome to believe what you want. “Alpha Wolf” carries a strong descriptive allure, after all. From Romulus and Remus nursed by a she-wolf at the founding of Rome, all the way down to today, wolf-lore runs rampant – and largely unfettered by the constraints of research. But just as the smart money for stomach ulcers is now on Amoxicillin rather than Tums, so too if you want to understand how wolf-packs form and are maintained, you’d be well-advised to follow the trail of T. gondii. Why? Well of course science really doesn’t care what you believe. Any more than a wolf does.
Ever faithful, ever true.