Like, when someone describes themselves as "an alpha", they're generally, well, beyond showing themselves to be somebody to be ignored, also not claiming to be the oldest.
> As for high-ranking [wolf] animals asserting any practical control over subordinates, the nature of the interaction is highly conditional. For example, with large prey such as adult moose (Alces alces), pack members of all ranks (ages) gather around a carcass and feed simultaneously, with no rank privilege apparent (Mech 1966; Haber 1977); however, if the prey is smaller, like a musk ox calf, dominant animals (breeders) may feed first and control when subordinates feed (Mech 1988; National Geographic 1988).
> Similarly, pups are subordinate to both parents and to older siblings, yet they are fed preferentially by the parents, and even by their older (dominant) siblings (Mech et al. 1999). On the other hand, parents both dominate older offspring and restrict their food intake when food is scarce, feeding pups instead. Thus, the most practical effect of social dominance is to allow the dominant individual the choice of to whom to allot food.
> The only other rank privilege I am aware of in natural situations is that high-ranking pups are more assertive in competing for food deliveries by adults and sometimes accompany adults on foraging trips at an earlier age than do subordinates (Haber 1977).
https://www.wolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/267alphastat...
Further, how humans are organized changes massively across cultures and usually there is a shared leadership model - shaman and chief equivalents that tell us nothing about how wolves organize themselves.
Is it really hard to accept that there is another meaning that is in vogue, but you did not consider it instead of doubling down on a false assumption?
Hard disagree. Even in communities who like to throw the term a lot, they get into discussion about which ones are the real alphas and thus they invented stuff like “sigma”.
Real life usage is really diffuse and mostly like the meme version of the “chad”, seems to be about who I personally like or like to be.
There is some heuristic which may avoid having to fight it out all the time, but this does not disprove that an alpha exists based on being more fit/dominant/strong/intelligent whatever, even fighting ability! Maybe age, or strength, or assertive personality, etc..all are proxies or different permutations for "fitness" which combine to promote some alpha above the rest. The general point here is that there still can be a hierarchy.
As I said in another comment[0] all of this is propaganda to muddle reality and disprove hierarchies, to re-assert egalitarianism/equality as dominant political ideology.
And a previous comment from yesterday seems applicable[1]... that constant fights don't need to occur to be able to identify and reward alphas even for fighting ability or other proxies of fitness, strength, capability etc shouldn't be surprising.
Here we have a guy who's been studying wolves for decades, and says it doesn't work like you describe. But you are so certain it works that way, that you say, well, he hasn't proved absolutely with certainty that it _doesn't_. That is not the way scientific knowledge works. The people actually studying wolves for years say it does not in fact work like you are simply assuming it does.