The concept of mentioning alpha was proposed for the first time in 1970 Explain the organization of wolves in a package. But the biologist is wildlife research David LeeAnd who formulated the term, was never aimed at “Alpha Male” to mean the only leader of the package. Instead, he described how the “alpha” and “Alpha Female” husband rules their group, making decisions and produces offspring.
This idea quickly spread to other social animals and was absorbed into popular culture, as it became a confident and firm character description and is often abrasive.
But more than 20 years after the publication of his male theory of alpha, I am argued Those subsequent observations showed that wild wolf packages were simply family groups, with only the pair of alpha parents. in videoHe acknowledged that “the term means that wolves fought and competed strongly to reach the top of the package. In fact, the way they reach there is just mating with one of the members of the opposite sex, and producing a handful of birth control, which is the rest of the package at the time – and become natural leaders in this way.”
Recent studies have challenged this idea of alpha in other animal species. Females are dominated exclusively in many animal groups, including Hyenaand Orcas and Mercatis. Any gender might a base Principals. And some species, such as African lionsForming alliances, with each individual shares an equal case.
Is the concept of alpha related or even real? Behavioral environment indicates this, although it may not be exactly the way we thought.
The majority of bold (group) animals adopt a form of social hierarchical sequence. This internal structure determines the arrival of each individual to different resources, such as food, colleagues and lands, thus helping the group to deal with conflicts and sometimes avoid the conflict completely.
Related to: Do animals have friends?
“Alpha only means that this animal, at a certain moment or for a specific time interval, is the top of the arrangement,” Paulo MottaI told the behavioral environment at the University of Porto in Portugal, direct sciences.
The nature and complexity of these classifications can vary greatly among species. Chicken You have a very linear hierarchy – one alpha female prevails, but each other chicken has a clearly specific location in the arrangement. Others, like Naked ((Unseen Glaber), You have one dominant pair – the female Alpha and Falfa who is born and controls the colony while almost all other members of the group are equal.
However, “in the social types of complex brains, the social relations style becomes more complicated, more widespread, not direct,” said Mota. The main species often have more flexible structures, with multiple hierarchical sequences that extend different aspects of the group’s life.
“Most of the time, these hierarchical serials depend on the fighting and are linked to power, so on the priority of access to resources,” he explained. Dieter LucasEvolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. “But there are other aspects of power: the idea of leadership – for example, who determines where the group goes today or whether it is fighting a neighboring group – and this is not necessarily linked to the hierarchical sequences itself.”
To add to this mixed image, these group classifications are not permanent social positions. The alpha condition is similar to a temporary role of the fungal feature of the pioneering individual. “In most types, the ranks can change frequently and very quickly, especially in cases where high -level individuals get higher benefits,” Lucas told Live Science. “If you look at the lives of the entire individuals, every individual may be a thousand at some point in their lives.”
Likewise, the people who are seen as male alpha in social situations may not be the person who will win in a fight, or the person you will choose as a leader. “Most of what we are talking about in animals is strength, but we know that there is also a place,” Lucas said. “This situation is something in which you have these different roles in society and I think humans are really distinguished by this huge flexibility.”
But he added, if we look closely, we can also see this same flexibility across different animal groups.
So where does this leave the concept of males alpha?
Motta said that some social groups of animals are dominated by one of the males, and in some types, it is possible to determine the physiological changes associated with this height in the situation. “In mice, the testes will grow larger and the animal will start producing more testosterone. It will start urinating everywhere instead of one place in order to mark the region. These changes occur after the animal changes its domination.”
However, Lucas argues that the term “Alpha Male” is very simple and ignores the nuances of social behavior and structure in the most intelligent species. “This concept is about alpha as a sudden that has absolute power in the group is not really useful because it blocks the fact that even if the male won all the battles, it may not be the decisions taken. Distribution of power is not so simple.”