Somewhere, a little boy is hearing the word "ostrich" and picturing a giant bird burying its head in the sand because his dumbass dad once told him they do that (just as his dumbass dad, in turn, told him ). It's the Circle Of Dumbasses. Well, we've sort of made it our mission here to break that circle . Toward that end ...

5 Wolf Packs Are Not Led By An "Alpha Wolf"

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We know the hierarchy of wolf packs: They consist of the "alpha" and "beta," or the dominant wolf and the submissive wolf. The alpha wolf fights his way to the top, ferociously dominates the weaker members of the pack, gets first dibs at every meal, and dubs himself the Neeson of the pack. This theory was made popular back in the '60s by scientist L. David Mech. After spending years carefully studying how wolves interacted with each other, Mech proposed the alpha/beta distinction based on observed dominance displays and inadvertently spawned decades of douchebag philosophy.

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The natural order of things dictates that, at any time, only one pimp hand can be strong.

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But, Science Says:

Here's the problem: The pack Mech studied was captive, and the wolves were complete strangers. That's like basing your entire understanding of human social dynamics on an episode of Big Brother.

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"No alphas, no betas, and only valuable to society when eaten by wolves."

When forced to live with complete strangers, wolves will unsurprisingly form hierarchies to establish some sort of pecking order -- but, that's simply not how it works in the wild. Mech, realizing his mistake, has spent years trying to quash the myth and begging the publisher to stop reprinting his book that originally made it famous. More recent research reveals that wild wolf packs are basic family units, and the "alpha" is just a wolf who found a lonely lady wolf to bone. Then, they had some pups that will, one day, go off to do the same.