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Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs
Abstract
The prevailing view of a wolf (Canis lupus) pack is that of a group of individuals ever vying for dominance but held in check by the "alpha" pair, the alpha male and alpha female. Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs, however, has been conducted on non-natural assortments of captive wolves. Here I describe the wolf-pack social order as it occurs in nature, discuss the alpha concept and social dominance and submission, and present data on the precise relationships among members in free-living packs, based on a literature review and 13 summers of observations of wolves on Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. I conclude that the typical wolf pack is a family, with the adult parents guiding the activities of the group in a division-of-labor system in which the female predominates primarily in such activities as pup care and defense and the male primarily during foraging and food-provisioning and the travels associated with them.
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Cited by
The Social Organisation of a Population of Free-Ranging Dogs in a Suburban Area of Rome
Bonanni, R., & Cafazzo, S. (2014) · The Social Dog · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-407818-5.00003-6 · Cited by 54
Dogs, but Not Wolves, Lose Their Sensitivity Toward Novelty With Age
Hansen Wheat, C., van der Bijl, W., & Temrin, H. (2019) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02001 · Cited by 50
Relationship quality affects social stress buffering in dogs and wolves
Cimarelli, G., Marshall-Pescini, S., Range, F., Berghänel, A., & Virányi, Z. (2021) · Animal Behaviour · doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.06.008 · Cited by 22
Novaro, A. J., Funes, M. C., & Jiménez, J. E. (2004) · The Biology and Conservation of Wild Canids · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198515562.003.0015 · Cited by 14
Prolonged Intensive Dominance Behavior Between Gray Wolves, Canis lupus
Mech, L. D., & Cluff, H. D. (2010) · The Canadian Field-Naturalist · doi:10.22621/cfn.v124i3.1076 · Cited by 12
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Mech, L. D.
- Venue
- Canadian Journal of Zoology
- Publisher
- Canadian Science Publishing
- Published
- 1999
- Volume
- 77
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1196-1203
- ISSN
- 0008-4301 (ISSN-L)
- 1480-3283
- OpenAlex
- W2111209696
- Cited by
- 485
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 4.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
