Nobody is on top
This dossier answers an idea a lot of people take for granted: that wherever there are several dogs, wolves or people, someone has to be in charge, and that someone is the "alpha". The idea sounds reasonable because we have seen it in documentaries, in series, in internet memes and in some training schools. But the history of where the term came from, what scientists actually studied, and what the same authors said afterwards shows that the ground under it is not what it looks like. The long answer is below, with years, names, and what each study does and does not show.
- The idea that seems obvious
- Basel Zoo in 1947
- Thirteen summers with wild wolves
- The author who took back his own word
- A dog is not a wolf, and dominance is not a trait
- What veterinary medicine says
- A decision, not a biological conclusion
- What this means at modopup
- If someone asks you about alpha
The idea that seems obvious
"Alpha" sounds like a comfortable explanation. When several dogs fight over a bone, we call the winner the alpha. When somebody takes charge in a human situation, we sometimes borrow the same word. The picture is simple: there is a ladder, and the one at the top is in charge.
The picture has force because it is easy to tell. Nobody has to explain context, relationships, personal history or agreements. One word seems to tell us who is in charge and why. The problem is that the word does not come from where most people think it comes from, and the scientists who put it into circulation corrected it a long time ago.
What follows is not an attack on people who use the word "alpha" in daily life. Plenty of them use it because they have heard it a thousand times. What is examined here is the idea that nature imposes a hierarchy of alphas, and that we should therefore organize ourselves the same way. That chain of argument does not hold.
Basel Zoo in 1947
The term comes out of a 1947 study published in the journal Behaviour by Rudolf Schenkel, a zoologist who observed wolves at Basel Zoo in Switzerland. The study was called "Ausdrucks-Studien an Wölfen: Gefangenschafts-Beobachtungen", which translates roughly as "Studies of expression in wolves: observations in captivity".
Schenkel described submissive and dominant behaviour among the wolves he observed. From there came the terms "alpha male" and "alpha female". That vocabulary ended up in books, documentaries and popular culture. But there is one central detail that is usually left out: the animals Schenkel observed were not a wolf family living together in the wild. They were wolves captured in different places and put together in an enclosure of ten by twenty metres.
For a wild wolf, whose territory can cover hundreds of square kilometres, ten by twenty metres is tiny. The animals did not know each other, they had not chosen to share territory, and they could not walk away from whoever made them uncomfortable. What Schenkel measured, without meaning to, was how strangers organize themselves when they are forced to live in a small space. That is not the same thing as the life of a wolf pack.
None of this makes the study bad or means that Schenkel lied. The study describes something real: how wolves act when trapped under those conditions. The mistake comes later, when that observation was used to explain the life of all wolves, then of all dogs and finally of people. That leap was not in the study.
Thirteen summers with wild wolves
In 1999 the biologist L. David Mech published an article in the Canadian Journal of Zoology called "Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs". The work rested on thirteen summers of direct observation of wild wolves on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, plus a review of the earlier literature.
Mech reached a different conclusion. The typical group of wild wolves is not a set of adults competing for command. It is a wolf family: a father, a mother and their pups from several litters. The animals that lead a wolf pack are not alphas who beat others. They are the parents. The rest do not submit because they lost a fight. They stay because they are children who have not yet left the range they grew up in.
Mech's article is peer reviewed and has been cited more than three hundred times. In almost thirty years it has not been refuted. His conclusion is not a romantic reading and not an attempt to make wolves look tender. It is a zoological description of what is observed in the wild. When you study a wolf pack in the wild, what you see is a family structure with a division of labour, not a pyramid of ranks won by fighting.
None of this means there is never conflict between wolves. There is. But conflict is not the rule that defines how the pack is organized. Most interactions are not fights over power. They are caring for pups, cooperative hunting, defending territory and teaching the young.
The author who took back his own word
Here comes one of the most important parts of the history. The same L. David Mech who studied wild wolves for thirteen summers was also the author who popularized the term "alpha". In 1970 he published the book "The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species". Generations of biologists, trainers, documentary makers and the general public read that book. Most of the image of the alpha wolf in circulation today comes out of it.
On his own website Mech explains that the word "alpha" implies competing with others and reaching the top by winning a fight. Most of the wolves that lead a wolf pack did not get there that way. They got there simply because they mated and had pups, and those pups became their wolf family. Leadership is not a prize for fighting. It comes out of breeding and raising young.
Mech also writes that a good deal of the information in the 1970 book is still correct and that much of it has been overtaken. We have learned more about wolves in the last forty years than in all previous history, he says. That includes the idea of the alpha as a central figure. The author who spread the term is the first to say it should not be read the way it used to be read.
None of this is a case of "science changes and nobody knows anything". It is the case of a scientist who did influential work, then did more work, found new evidence and corrected his own conclusion in public. That is the opposite of the stereotype of the scientist clinging to one idea.
A dog is not a wolf, and dominance is not a trait
Even if the alpha model were valid for wolves, there would still be a large gap between that and dogs. Dogs are not wolves. They carry thousands of years of domestication, artificial selection, living with humans and breeding in contexts that have nothing to do with life in the wild. Comparing the behaviour of a city dog with that of a wild wolf is, at best, a limited comparison.
But there is a stronger argument. In 2009 John Bradshaw, Emily Blackwell and Rachel Casey published an article in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior titled "Dominance in domestic dogs: useful construct or bad habit?". In it they argue that dominance, used rigorously, is not a personality trait an individual "has". It is a property of a relationship between two individuals in a specific situation.
That changes everything. Saying "that dog is dominant" is imprecise. The accurate version would be "in this situation, between these two dogs, one of them reaches the resource first". Even so, it does not turn that dog into a permanent alpha. In another situation, with another resource and another dog, the relationship can be different.
The idea of the alpha as a personality collapses because it describes nobody. It describes a moment. And if alpha is not something a person is, it cannot be used to justify putting a person, a pup or a dog permanently above the others.
What veterinary medicine says
In December 2008 the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior published an official position on the use of dominance theory in modifying animal behaviour. The society rejected the revival of dominance theory and training techniques based on forcing submission.
The position points out that most unwanted behaviour comes from accidental reinforcement rather than from a wish to rise in rank. When a dog pulls on the leash, jumps or does not obey, it is rarely trying to become the leader of a wolf pack. It has usually learned that the behaviour gets it something, or it never learned anything else. Correcting it takes teaching rather than imposing a hierarchy.
It matters not to overstate what this document covers. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior is a scientific society of specialists in animal behaviour. Its position is about dogs and about training. It is not proof of how people should organize themselves. It is a solid argument against the idea that dominance is a natural force you have to master to keep order.
If someone tells you your dog is challenging you because it wants to be the alpha, veterinary behavioural medicine does not support that sentence. And if someone tells you people need an alpha to avoid chaos, that sentence does not come from the biology of wolves or of dogs.
A decision, not a biological conclusion
From 1947 to 2009 the chain is clear. The term "alpha" was born in a zoo, from unfamiliar wolves in a cramped space. In the wild, wolves live in wolf families, not in pyramids of power. The author who popularized the term took it back. In dogs, dominance is not a personality trait. And veterinary medicine rejects training based on forcing submission.
All of that shows that the biological justification for alpha is not solid. It does not follow automatically from there how we should organize our nights. The reasoning "nature does not do it, so neither do we" is the mirror image of "nature does it, so it is fine". Both make the same mistake: they try to pull a social rule out of a biological description.
At modopup we do not reject ranks because science orders us to. We reject permanent ranks because we decided that we want a space where everyone has the same rights. That decision explains itself. It does not need to disguise itself as a zoology lesson. Zoology only clears the path: it removes one false justification. The choice is still ours.
What this means at modopup
The idea of alpha does not explain our space, and we do not ban it as a magic word either. What we do not do is turn it into a rule. At modopup:
- Nobody has more rights than anyone else. It does not matter how long you have been here, how much gear you own or how many events you have organized. Your voice counts the same as the voice of whoever arrived today.
- Whoever organizes, organizes that event. The role does not turn them into a permanent leader. When the night is over they are one person among others again. The role belongs to the event, not to the person.
- There is no entry test. Nobody decides who belongs. You do not have to prove submission, experience or loyalty to be here.
- Roles are play. If in a session one person leads and another obeys, that lasts as long as the game and only because both of them want it. It does not carry over into the social space and it grants no rights.
Someone who calls themselves an "alpha pup" is free to do so. We are not going to take their self-description away. Neither are we going to accept that the label gives them authority over anyone else. The word can be personal. The hierarchy cannot be compulsory.
If someone asks you about alpha
Often the question comes in good faith. A neighbour heard the word in a documentary. A doorman watched a series. A relative read a training article. The most useful answer is not to deny that the word exists. It is to say where it came from.
You can say that the term was born in a 1947 study in a zoo in Switzerland, with wolves that did not know each other, in an enclosure of ten by twenty metres. That a biologist then spent thirteen summers with wild wolves and published in 1999 that wolf packs are wolf families. That the same author who popularized the term in his 1970 book corrected it later. That in dogs dominance is not a personality trait, according to a 2009 paper. And that veterinary medicine rejected dominance training in 2008.
That does not win you a backyard argument. It does show that the word "alpha" is not a stable zoological fact. It is an idea with a history, and that history includes a public correction by the person who made it famous.