There’s Absolutely No Such Thing As An Alpha Male Wolf to Emulate

Successful Leaders Share and Cuddle

The term ‘Alpha Male’ may have come to be used recently to describe the office bully or philandering husband, but its more common usage has always been to describe a figure men should aspire to be, a natural-born leader, the archetypal thrusting businessman such as the self-titled “Wolf of Wall Street”, or top sportsman pummeling his competition into the ground.

The sad part about it is that it’s all nonsense.

Just as generations earlier believed the writings of the anthropologist Margaret Mead, taking as gospel her titillating accounts of the sexual mores of the Pacific Islanders with such titles as ‘Growing up in New Guinea’ or ‘Coming of age in Samoa’ (possibly because the Obscene Publication Act would have come down hard if they hadn’t been “educational”), the theory that gave rise to this shorthand for powerful males is based on an outdated misunderstanding.

At the time, her writings were generally accepted or more accurately went unchallenged, passing even into education courses for future teachers, by readers secretly thrilled at the idea of everyone freely having it away under the full moon. It’s since been understood that the accounts were more likely the product of the Pacific Islanders’ and their translators’ wishful thinking. Their tales have since been discredited. So too has the concept of the Alpha Male by no less than its own creator David Mech, author of 11 books on wolves. He freely admits to mistakenly creating the myth of the alpha male wolf who wins control of his pack through violent fights, in his 1970 book ‘The Wolf: Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species.’

However, he has since debunked that theory in his 1999 paper after many more years spent studying wolves in the wild. And he should know, according to Purdue University in 2005 when conferring upon him an additional honorary degree, “No one has written about, spoken of or debated the status and future of the wolf more than him.”

His website is called ‘Wolf News and Info’ http://davemech.org/wolf-news-and-information/. and he states there that:

‘one of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. “Alpha” implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that’s all we call them today, the “breeding male,” “breeding female,” or “male parent,” “female parent,” or the “adult male” or “adult female.”’

He has begged his publishers to stop publishing the book over the last 21 years but to no avail.

It seems a theory that excuses the behaviour of bullies is still a big seller.

We have even taken into current usage the idea of the Alpha Female, who, through maternal wisdom and sheer cunning, or just plain force of personality, gets the wolf pack to do as she wants.

The simple truth is that wolves in captivity don’t behave in the same way as they do in the wild and so offer us little in the way of useful information about the survival of the fittest. Wild wolves who navigate real-world challenges wander dozens of miles in a single night looking for corvids and smaller scavengers who’ve found a carcass and who wait for the wolves to tear it open, revealing the flesh and innards for all the beasts to feast on.

Real wolves, free to be their natural selves, out there surviving against all odds, work together as a team for the benefit of all concerned in their particular industry or project.

It is only male wolves in captivity that act out aggressively and needs to assert dominance.

So it seems to be with our self labelled Alpha Males in human society. Over asserting dominance is a sign of weakness, a symptom of distress at perceiving themselves to be a captive of their situation, social set, or imposed pecking order. The only way they have found to cope is to appear to be dominant in the miserable confines of their own lives.

To overcome this sense of powerlessness or threat, the worst examples of self-styled alpha males don’t share for the good of all; they thrive instead on the unnecessary disembowelling of the emotional innards of others, weakened by disability, tragedy, abusive upbringing, trauma or loss to instil fear and promote themselves as being stronger than the rest. They will seek out support in this by those too cowardly to challenge them or lead themselves, happy to be among the pitchfork and torch-bearing crowd urging the bully on to tear into hapless victims.

History is littered with examples, from Roman Caesars terrified of their mothers, fearing senators and demonising Christians in the hopes of distraction away from their own inadequacies, followed by kings, such as Henry VIII, desperate to blame a succession of wives for their inadequacy in bearing him a son and heir, via Stalin (who was short and paranoid) Mao (who had bad teeth, bad breath and suffered from STDs) and Hitler, (who really did only have one testicle and a Jewish grandmother) to a miserable proliferation of modern oligarchs, political bullies (do I really have to name them?), who demonise immigrants, the green movement, the Europeans, the disabled or the unemployed.

These examples of Alpha Male types in extremis don’t have friends; they have accomplices who at some point will become victims.

And their ‘friends’ know and fear it.

These Alpha Male wannabes are products of their own societal captivity, hemmed in by limited horizons, ignorance of the wider world and propelled by fear of being exposed.

Media and the gossip machine, depending on the context, only serve their needs in aggrandising their abilities, following and impact, creating a caustic tidal wave of covert approval by creating a myth so much bigger than the reality of their miserably underachieving lives.

So it is in all our lives. We all know or have been the target of someone who lords it over others, who intimidates those too weak to stand up to him (or her) and use fear of retaliation, stalking, reputational damage, threatened violence, withdrawal of patronage or calumny to get away with it.

The Alpha Male is not a natural phenomenon like a genius to be admired; he is a sad animal, distressed at not coping or adapting to living within what he interprets as a compound, is incapable of surviving outside of a very parochial, confining network, and is a work of fiction in the wider world.

Dangerous Real-World Consequences

I recently came across an interesting example of this phenomenon — the Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialist who, after leaving the armed forces becomes engaged in post-conflict cleanup activities and is unable to acknowledge or admit when the challenges exceed his skills.

As a result in the period 2000–2010, there was a far higher possibility of western-trained ‘experts’ dying during these activities than the relatively untrained nationals. This figure is all the more appalling when you consider that the local deminers outnumber them 1 to 30. The problem is that the western military ‘expert’ will believe that their training is the best in the world and will discount local knowledge and methods despite the fact the locals benefit from local specialist knowledge having always worked for that region. The sense of superiority instilled by their training gives them a blinkered view that belittles the very relevant and life-saving knowledge of the group. (see Database of Demining Accident victims at DDAS online)

Successful top dog leaders share and cuddle.

Frans De Waal, Ph.D., a primatologist and ethologist at Emory University in Atlanta, author of Chimpanzee Politics, which was recommended by Newt Gingrich to freshman congressmen tells us in his TedMed talk in Boston March 2020 that the position of the alpha male is to keep the peace, to show empathy for others, to stop fights without judgment, completely impartial, and by doing so provide support and security for the underdog and an enormous amount of comfort and consolation, with levels of empathy above that which the females display. Males who excel at keeping the peace and providing comfort as the ‘consoler in chief’ become popular leaders and stabilise their position. Chimpanzee society, close relatives of ours, respects a caring leader and will support and defend him. What they will not tolerate is a bully who may lose their life as a result of such behaviour.

The smallest male with the right friends and female support, much like successful human politicians, can absolutely come to power and be the leader of the pack if they prove themselves to be generous, share their food, build alliances and spend time playing with babies, not the norm for the male chimpanzee.

I will leave you with his words:

“If you are looking at men in our society who are the boss of, let’s say, a family, a business, Washington, or whatever, you call them alpha male. You should not insult chimpanzees by using the wrong label. You should not call a bully an alpha male. Someone who’s big, strong, intimidates, and insults everyone is not necessarily an alpha male. An alpha male has many qualities. I have seen bully alpha males in chimpanzees. They occur, but most of the ones that we have, have leadership capacities and are integrated into their community, and in the end, they’re loved and respected. It’s a very different situation than you may think.”