In the article “The Myth of the Alpha Wolf,” Kara Lilly points out that in Mech’s 1970 bestselling book, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, he discusses a biologist from the 1940s who had been studying wolves in captivity and who first used the term “alpha wolf” in reference to the biologist’s “observation that male and female wolves seemed to compete to become dominant within their group.”
