1. Wolves are highly social and family-oriented animals. Rather than living in a pack of unrelated wolves, a pack is usually made up of an alpha male and female, offspring from previous years who are “helper” wolves, and the current year’s litter of pups. Sometimes, but rarely, a lone outsider will be welcomed into the pack as well. Packs can range from as few as three or four wolves to as many as 20 members depending on the abundance of food within the pack’s territory.
2. For a long time it was thought that there was an established pecking order in a wolf pack, with the alpha male and female having earned their rank through dominance. New research has shown that this “fight for dominance” is far from the truth. “Wolves do not have an innate sense of rank; they are not born leaders or born followers,” writes io9.
“The ‘alphas’ are simply what we would call in any other social group ‘parents.’ The offspring follow the parents as naturally as they would in any other species. No one has ‘won’ a role as leader of the pack; the parents may assert dominance over the offspring by virtue of being the parents.” Meanwhile, younger wolves don’t typically fight an alpha for rank, but instead disperse from the family group to form their own pack in another territory.
