I agree, one would assume that DM was aware of this fact.

Alpha female in this pack is going to blooming well KILL Alpha male if he doesn't go out hunting and bring me back a new computer !! I have just literally spent the last half hour writing a literary masterpiece following my reading of the excellent paper by David Mech entitled "Whatever Happened to the Term Alpha Wolf" ... and suddenly the screen changed back to another thread that I have been visiting today, and I lost the lot !! Grrrr. Never mind, I shall start again.

Right, the way I see what DM is saying is this.

He lived for many summers on Ellesmere Island with a pack of wild wolves there. Ellesmere Island is right up near the North Pole, so presumably a very inhospitable place for wolves to live. They were doubtless driven there over the last few hundred years because of man's persecution of them. So what David Mech is saying is this. On this island, you cannot call these wolves a pack, it is more like a family group. This is because food is scarce, the place is inhospitable and numbers cannot grow. So the situation we have here is artificial in that it does not represent a true wolf pack. In this artificial situation, there is no need for an Alpha Male and an Alpha Female, but more of a Matriarch and Patriarch - a mother and father figure. Who breed, and their cubs will be forced to flee the nest as soon as they can because of the limited resources. Presumably many of them will die. You are not going to have the situation that you will have in a wolf pack proper, where the female cubs when they reach sexual maturity will frequently mate with any opportunistic lone male who is sniffing around the periphery hoping for a quick leg over ! There likely ARE no opportunistic lone males because of the appalling quality of life. So therefore there is not going to be the need for Alpha Male and Female, keeping order through their trusty Beta Enforcers, instead you have a mummy and a daddy who will mate and have cubs, cubs which when grown up are going to have to leave. This is not a natural pack.

What is a natural pack is what we are now finding in Yellowstone, according to David Mech. These are wolf packs as wolf packs were before man started to persecute them and drive them away into remote areas where they living was harsh. We now have thriving packs in Yellowstone numbering 50 or more animals, and it is these packs that DO have an alpha male and female because of the fact that the female offspring are growing up to mate with these opportunistic lone males who are sniffing around waiting for the opportunity to have a quick hows your father ! These young females get pregnant, give birth, and stay in the pack.

So what David Mech is saying IMO is that where wolves are left alone, as they are currently are in Yellowstone and long may it last, to live and breed as normal wild wolves, they DO live in packs, with the old fashioned idea of Alpha Male and Alpha Female.

What we are seeing all too often in the wild is artificial situations like Ellesmere Island ... although that is probably an old fashioned and inaccurate statement, because Ellesmere Island is the norm now, and Yellowstone the artificial ! And yet Yellowstone IS the natural ! What a paradox that is. Here we have a species that has been all but wiped out by man, to survive they have had to change the basic and fundamental way that they live, and it is going to be the very species that drove them to that state that will quite probably be their salvation !

Hope this makes sense.

So, after that long ramble, I am still of the opinion that we need to be alpha male and alpha female to our dogs !

I think I must be thick. Whether they are Yellowstone wolves or living in harsher environments, they are still wild wolves. How do they relate to our domestic dogs and how we act with them?
Sorry if I've missed the point, this is all quite testing on my limited brain space!

It`s not you! It seems to be the case that some people like to pretend their dog is a wolf. No idea why. I thought this site was for dog- lovers not wannabe wild-free-spirited-mystic-tribespeople-deeply in-tune with-untamed-nature-bonding-mysteriously-but-silently-with-their-softly-padding-grey-furred-cousin-Wolf. But there we are.

They are indeed still wild wolves Janie, but David Mech's observations are such that the packs living in harsher environments are not really packs at all, but more like Family Units.

You've not missed the point at all, I originally went off thread by comparing dogs with wolves, which I believe to be relevant, and not off thread, because dogs have been reclassified as being the same species as wolves through the mitochondrial RNA.

According to some dog behaviourists, and Shaun Ellis for example, they believe that a lot of the behaviour that our dogs display is directly inherited from their wolf ancestors, a view to which I subscribe, having lived with dogs and high % wolf crosses in my own home.

And I bet my brain space is more limited than your's !!

(A reversal of "mine's bigger than your's" !!)

Wheesh C & D ! That was a tad nasty ! If you are referring to me, my current dog is not a wolf, nor was my last. However, my last dog WAS quite a high %. I don't give a fig whether you believe me or not, but facts are facts. I don't want to fall out with you, this thread has thus far been most enjoyable, please don't spoil it now !!

I am a dog lover, I am an animal lover in general, but my two greatest loves are dogs and wolves, closely followed by horses. I am certainly NOT a mystic tribesperson, although I am extremely flattered if that was aimed at me !! I would LOVE to be deeply in tune with untamed nature and bond mysteriously and silently with a Wolf !!

Wishful thinking on both our parts I'm afraid !!

Sorry, I got so carried away there at the thought of being a mystical person, that I forgot to say the reason I posted that long ramble about David Mech was because pages and pages back in this long thread, I had been rebuked on several occasions by different people because I had not commented on the various links that had been put up to various scientists' papers etc. etc.

Having waded through the first 33 pages of this thread, making notes on all the different links, I decided that the task was too Herculean for me, and that I would have to just concentrate on one scientist, so I chose David Mech.

That's the reason for the long ramble above. I am sorry, I should have explained that !

Absolutely fabulous!!! C&D you are spot on. I am speaking as the owner of 3.5 non wolfy dogs that are the product of centuries of selective breeding to make then efficient, pro-social, hunting machines, with absolutely perfect manners.......... And they are just perfect!!! What is wrong with that?

Absolutely nothing Maxine ! I love GSPs, I used to have a lovely bitch called Lizzie who I bred a couple of litters from.

One strange aspect of the Alpha people is that they still want their animals not to attack strange dogs. This to me seems to counter the whole pack/dominance mentality where strangers are rebuked by the pack almost automatically and they follow up with full force when necessary. Yet, for the most part this doesn't happen. So how does the acceptance of strange dogs in the park or even its own own house reconciled with the pack idea?