A Commonplace Book

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New Yorker 8Galchen 9

 

..."alpha male" and "alpha female."... It turned out all that stuff was mostly wrong.

It wasn't until the early seventies, after we'd put those radios on wolves and we could follow each individual that we realized, Oh, a pack is a family.

As Kira Cassidy, an associate research scientist with a National Park Service research program in Yellowstone, explained, "The wolves generally in those dominant positions are not there because they fought for it. It's not some battle to get to the top position. They're just the oldest, or the parents.
-- Rivka Galchen. The Myth of the Alpha Wolf, New Yorker (March 25, 2023).
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