In true wolf packs, there are no alphas, betas or other Greek letter designations for levels of dominance and submission. However, the concept of alpha males appears again and again in business leadership guides and advice, not to mention the misogynistic depths of the internet.
“Highly intelligent, confident and successful, alpha males represent nearly 70% of all senior executives,” reported the Harvard Business Review. “As the label implies, they’re the people who are unhappy unless they’re the top dogs—the ones calling the shots. While there are many successful female leaders with equally strong personalities, we find top women rarely match the complete alpha profile.”
The pet food industry is no exception to this alpha myth. From brand names to marketing slogans, the idea of alpha wolves has been coined to refer to companion animals and their relationship with humans. As a business sector closely associated with the wildly successful descendants of wolves, perhaps the pet food industry can play a role in debunking the pseudo-science behind alpha dogs. At the same time, abandoning the idea of an alpha dominance hierarchy can benefit the management and leadership of pet food producers, ingredient suppliers, equipment manufacturers and others in the industry.
“…What’s real is family” – Dom Toretto, Furious 7
One of Hollywood’s on-screen alpha males, Vin Diesel, accidentally debunked the idea of the alpha wolf with a quote from the series “The Fast and the Furious.” The concept of alpha males comes from experiments conducted by Rudolf Schenkel in the 1940s. Schenkel observed groups of wolves confined at the Basel Zoo in Switzerland. The wolves are not related to each other and live in cages that are only 10 by 20 meters. Under these crowded and unnatural conditions, wolves develop hierarchies in which the dominant male and female form a pair bond and prevent other wolves from controlling the pack. These observations led to the concept of alpha wolves. However, even Schenkel noted that these are not natural conditions. several generations of their own offspring. The family is reality.
Some have suggested that the Schenkel experiments more closely resemble the situation of people in prison. Does someone want to run their pet food business like the head of the Aryan Brotherhood?
Empirical observation of wolf packs
Another wolf researcher David L. Mech was the first to use the alpha term in his research publications and a popular book published in 1970. However, observations of wild wolves led him to reject the term in the late 90s. However, Mech’s early work popularized the term, and some people vigorously beat their chests at the feeling of being vindicated by a supposed natural order that placed them in top of the world However, among the wolf packs of Ellesmere Island, Canada, Mech never saw an alpha male dominating the beta-cucks and females of his social group.
“I concluded that the typical wolf pack is a family, where the adult parents guide the group’s activities in a division-of-labor system where the female primarily dominates activities such as -care and defense of the pup and the male is primarily during the foraging period. and foraging and the journeys associated with them,” Mech wrote in the Canadian Journal of Zoology in 1999.
Wolf packs are not patriarchy or matriarchy, and alphas do not restrain young pups to prevent them from becoming leaders themselves. Instead, mother and father wolves share responsibilities. The main goals of leaders are to protect and teach the next generation how to become successful leaders of their own groups one day. That sounds like a good way to run a business, too.
“Without family, you get nothing.” – Dom Toretto, Fast X
