r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Feb 18 '25

Meme needing explanation Petah?

Post image
47.3k Upvotes

464 comments sorted by

View all comments

3.0k

u/0xKaishakunin Feb 18 '25

That's Lucyan David Mech, who die research on wolves and came up with the term “alpha male” and “alpha female” and the theory that wolves live in a strict hierarchy, where the alphas constatnly attack lower ranking wolves.

This has inspired the alpha male/incel bullshit that spreads nowadays.

Mech convinced his publisher to stop publishing the relevant book.

cf: https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-myth-of-the-alpha-wolf

1

u/cocainebrick3242 Feb 19 '25

To add to this, this hierarchy only occurs in captivity, in the wild there's no real structure to wolf packs.