![]() Rudolf Schenkel wrote about social structure and body language among wolves in 1947. So how did the idea for the alpha wolf come about? We don't talk about the alpha male, the alpha female and the beta child in a human family," Zimmermann said. ![]() "The adults are simply in charge because they are the parents of the rest of the pack members. The group may also include one- to three-year-old offspring that have not yet headed out on their own. Most wolf packs simply consist of two parents and their puppies. But this is not a concept that works for wolves in the wild," she says. Then there may be several rank levels, beta, gamma and so on. Zimmermann is a professor at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences who studies wolves. In reality, wolf packs are usually much less complicated.Ĭalling wolves alpha and beta animals comes from research on wolves in captivity, says Barbara Zimmermann. The pack structure is said to include a "beta wolf" who is the deputy and the "omega wolf" who is at the bottom of the rank, and often the victim of bullying. On the Howstuffworks website, for example, you can read that wolves follow "an incredibly sophisticated group hierarchy," and that wolves naturally organize themselves in packs for stability and to help each other with hunting. Maybe some of these wolves might challenge the alpha male to take over leadership of the pack? You can imagine that relatives, newcomers and challengers are all part of the system. Given this designation, it's easy to imagine that a pack consists of young adults and older animals in a strict ranking system.
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