TL;DR: Everything you think you know about animal...

TL;DR: Everything you think you know about animal behavior is a lie. Also, humans are animals, yo.

unquietpirate:
amondra:
cyprith:
koryos:
Dominance Behavior in Canids
I didn’t really even WANT to make a post about this.
The alpha-beta-omega model of wolf packs is dead in scientific literature, hammered into the ground, so to speak, and it’s been dead for over ten years. So why am I still hearing about it on TV and reading about it in articles? Why are popular dog trainers that encourage you to “be the alpha” still taken seriously?
I think the unfortunate truth is that the idea that there are strong and ferocious leaders in wolf packs and that you, too, can take on that role with your dog is just somehow appealing to people. Almost romantic, in the older sense of the word. And because of this, it makes money. It sells werewolf media. It sells dog training classes. Educational science channels that have no business promoting this false ideology keep it on board because it gets people watching.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m pretty fed up with the whole thing.
Okay, let’s talk about dominance, particularly what the word even means, because popular media does a terrible job of explaining it.
Read more…
This is fantastic. I roll my eyes so hard every time I see yet another writer trotting out the alpha/beta shit for their werewolf packs.
If you want to write about a group of werewolves that are emotionally and physically assaulted by the individual they elected to lead them on a regular basis, fine. But don’t pretend that’s really how wolf packs work.
(Although, that would be pretty interesting, actually. If the author recognized that she was writing an unhealthy and abusive dynamic and actually portrayed it as such? Pack alpha character actually a violent, terrorist cult leader? Pretty neat. I’d read it.)
This is why the werewolves in my novel don’t even touch that crap. I wanted to make sure I was as far away from this as possible. Not to mention as one of my characters put it, they are Werewolves not wolves. They were human first.
From the expanded article:
While there are many hazy definitions of the word dominance in the current scientific literature, the most accepted one that I have seen is that dominance is a factor of a relationship between two individuals regarding control of resources. In this relationship, the submissive individual will allow the dominant individual to have the resource. Theoretically.
What dominance is NOT is a character trait. No animal is born “the alpha.”
[…]
Sometimes the hierarchy changes for no apparent reason at all.
Different species appear to have different forms of hierarchies, but it also really depends on who you’re asking about it and how they analyzed it and what theory was popular when they did. The study of dominance can be unfortunately subjective.
Well, this seems relevant.
I especially liked
The word ‘submissive’ has a negative connotation. It suggests a loss of power, a humbling, a subjugation. It might be better to remove it as a label for certain types of canid behavior, in that case. Canidsdon’t demand submissive behavior from one another, they offer it. Muzzle-biting in wolves, which seems fierce, is usually solicited from the animal being bitten- several times in a row. Far from the popularized “alpha roll,” canids rarely force each other to roll over- they use rolling over as an invitation to play or a plea for affection. This type of affiliative, cohesive behavior makes up the vast majority of all social behavior in canid groups.
Most animal behavior that pings as “hey, I want to interact with you and I’m socially competent, so playing together will be safe and fun for both of us. You want?” is culturally marked (by humans) as submissive. Hmm.

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