Training Without Conflict® 팟캐스트 에피소드 33: Dr. L. David Mech

But, I guess, really, where I wanted to start with is like, what is anything of recent, any recent discoveries, any something new with the wolves that we didn't quite know or understand so far? Well, when I began, you know, it was a long time ago. And we knew very little about wolves at that time. We hardly knew. We didn't really know what a wolf pack was. And so, you know, the things I've learned in the last 60 years, some of you have known for a long time because we made those findings known. But when I started, we didn't know just what a wolf pack was. It turns out it's a family of wolves, basically. But we didn't know that at the time. And so, it was that kind of information that we were gathering that began to add to science's knowledge about wolves. One of the first things I found was that wolves have a very hard time catching their prey. And they have a very low success rate. I think at that time, because wolves lived in packs with lots of animals in the group, people just kind of thought they could kill whatever they wanted to, just about whenever they wanted to. But I quickly learned that that's just not the case at all, that their success rate, I started my wolf studies with a population of wolves that were preying on moose. And with that study, I learned that, at least in winter, their success rate was less than 10%. Really? Yeah. So, of all the moose they were trying to catch, they caught basically 7% or so. Interesting. Of those ones that they did catch, those animals tended to be old or weak or in some other way debilitated. Now, I wasn't the first to find that. Adolph Murie found that in 1944 when he was studying wolves that were chasing doll sheep. He found that they just took the oldest ones and those that had some disabilities. My work was a second on that. But I was able, as I said, to gain actual quantification of what percentage successful they were. Interesting. And a few years later, when we started putting radios on wolves, we started understanding then what a wolf pack was, that it was a family of wolves. Right. Right. And how did that change everything? I mean, like we all know, in a nutshell, the story of, you know, the term alpha wolf and how in the 47, whatever, the Rudolf Schenkel and how they did, how he was just put a bunch of wolves together. And they, of course, had to fight for some status and being social species.

It's normal, just as with us, to basically find out who is who in that kind of environment. That's very natural, correct? But eventually, you and almost everybody had to kind of retract from this alpha wolf term. And it's a little bit, it's interesting to me, but I will let you give your thoughts on this first, and then I will share some questions and ideas that I have. Yes. Okay. Well, as you mentioned, the early behaviorists didn't understand what a wolf pack was. So when they wanted to study a wolf pack, they put a lot of unrelated wolves together and called it a pack. And, of course, like, if you do that with most animals unrelated and put them all together, you know, like we know about the peck order in chickens. So that's what they do. They make a dominance hierarchy. And Schenkel saw the wolves do that, and he called the top male wolf the alpha male, the top female wolf the alpha female. And so when I summarized the information available for my 1970 book, that's all we knew at the time. And so, you know, I just labeled those wolves like he did, that the top ranking one was the alpha male and then the alpha female. And for so long, we continued, even after we realized that the wolf pack was a family, we continued to use those terms. And it wasn't until many years later in the late 90s, 1990s. Correct. That it dawned on me as I was watching a family of wolves that, sure, here was this big male wolf, apparent male, the father of the pack. And I was referring to him as the alpha. And I thought, wait a minute, why am I calling him alpha? And, you know, I mean, it was in my mind for so long. So it took a lot to suddenly make me realize that, wait a minute, this isn't right. The way that animal got to be the dominant wolf in the pack is he just mated with another wolf. And they had offspring. And so they were automatically just like human parents. They were dominant to the rest of the pack. But that didn't mean they fought to get to the top or anything. They just mated and produced their own pups. And so that's when I published the paper indicating that, you know, use of the term alpha was pretty outdated and we should change that. Yes. Yes. Very, very interesting. And, you know, this kind of opened a whole big can of worms in, even in the whole society. Forget about the animal kingdom. But really, even in social sciences, you know, like that whole idea of dominance. And it became a very, very controversial and everybody's trying to kind of pull the rug their way. And sure, everybody has a valid point in it.

As a dog trainer, one of the big problems for us is that because of that statement that you did, and I know that you try to retract it so many times, like I've, because I follow you and you try not to retract it, but to explain exactly what you mean. Because it really was taken out of context to where, you know, certain groups of even researchers and dog trainers and people as a group. And they misunderstood. Yeah. I didn't say there was no such thing as dominance. Right. But they, but a lot of the dog people thought that's what I was saying. Yes, because it kind of fits a certain narrative of a specific way of dog training. But at the same time, that is not, of course, for once, when you do good science, you cannot just twist it because of a narrative that you are following. Right. And, but it's also dangerous. And dominance, we know from, from everywhere that it's not a, it's not a bad thing by no means. There is no horrible things that are happening daily. But at the same time, dominance is something that, it's a, it's a constant. Every day, every hour, mom has to tell the puppy, you're still the puppy. Yeah. The yearling is trying to go to his dad and the dad has to look at him tall and say, hey, you are still not, not yet, not yet. And, and so dominance is a, it's a must have because it keeps harmony. Everything is in peace. Yes. Everybody knows their place in the family. Yes. All I, all I said is the term alpha was not the right term. That's all. I didn't say dominance wasn't the case. Right. Yeah. And, and, and, um, so I, I, I've been like, since, since that time, I've been thinking about the, the alpha and I guess, would it be correct or incorrect to say we have the parents, we can call them the parents or the, you know, like, um, the, the family, the, the, whatever. And, and not, not the parents. Right. And, but we also could correctly say, this is just my take on it, that the father is the alpha in the family. He didn't have to fight for that status, but he is the most dominant in the family. He is, well, he and she, because with Wolt, you know. Absolutely. Yeah. And there's still a question as to, I mean, a lot of the workers in Yellowstone think the, the female is maybe, uh, more of the leader than, than the male. I disagree with that, but, but that's science, you know. Yes. Yes. Alpha implies more than dominance. And that's, that's what I was trying to get to make the distinction between.

So it's certainly proper to call the parent, both the, the, um, the breeding male or the father to call it the dominant male. Mm-hmm. And a leader at the same time, correct? Sorry. And we also can call it the leader of the family or the leader of the child. Yes. So the leader of the group, as long as you understand that the female may be the leader as well. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. The, the parents are the leaders of the group and they dominate the offspring. They are dominant to the offspring. My only concern was calling them alpha, which implies that they fought to get to that position. There's nothing wrong with calling them dominant. Right. And, but there are, around there in, and I'm looking from, from dogs angle and, and from the little exposure to wolves that I've had in, I grew up back in Eastern Europe. So they were a little bit different. And I, I was looking at wolves from the different side. I was with the, with the shepherds and the big sheep dogs. And, and it, it still is a problem, but back then in, in early sixties, seventies, this was a bigger problem with the, with the wolves. But to my point, when we have within the family, there will be, there will be testing. Even though we know who is who in the family, there still will be constant check-ins and, and a little bit, you know, pushing the envelope to try to fight for, for a higher status in the, in the family. Eventually, eventually, as they grow up, they have two choices. One is to, to be, to accept it as being subordinate, or the other one would be to move out and find, find a mate and create their own family. Correct? That's what wolves do. Yes. And so would you say, is there any type of fighting, any type of aggression when enough of body posture and constant body language is not enough to, to, to subdue the, the wolf that is trying to now assert himself? You understand what I mean? I think I do. And I've seen cases of that in, in captivity where, where an offspring would challenge the parent and there would be a fight. And then I actually saw the fight. That's in captivity. But in the wild, what happens is, you know, they can't keep fighting. That just doesn't make sense in terms of, but so what happens is one of them runs off. You know, and usually it's the offspring. I have seen a case where, and I don't know the details because I wasn't watching this, but I had the wolves radio collared. So I knew what happened. But where I had the, the, the breeding female for several years. And one of her, her daughter offspring became, started breeding. Okay. Okay. It's complicated.

The, the, in this pack, I had both the father and the mother radio collared and one of the daughters. And I had another male radio collared somewhere else. And, um, the, um, the, um, one day the, the, uh, the mother wolf disappeared. Um, we know she left, didn't die because we had the, we had her collared. So we know she left the pack. And the. Hmm. This was 50 years ago. No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm amazed even that you can. Oh, I know the, the, the, a new male, uh, um, I think either killed the father or the father left and a new male that I had collared elsewhere moved in and bred with the female. Okay. All right. So now that animal was a stepfather. Well, then that mother wolf left and the daughter bred with the stepfather. Okay. Yeah. So maybe in that case, maybe the daughter female might have challenged her mother. I can't, I don't know that. Sure, sure. I just know the mother left and I know the, the daughter became, uh, the breeder in that pack. But basically the idea is that they don't stay and fight. They may not get along, but they, you know, and, and this is actually, you know, not that different in a human family. Often, uh, breeding, uh, young, uh, teenager, um, doesn't get along with his folks and they leave and become, they go off on their own. And that kind of thing. Correct. Correct. And that is what happens with wolves. Yes. And so they, I mean, yeah, like, as you said, uh, there is a huge difference between having enough space to choose to, to remove yourself. Yeah. This is, we see this even because I, I also breed, uh, uh, cause I breed Belgian Malinois. And I've been doing this for, since 1989. So it's like good 40 years or so. And even with the smallest puppies, as soon as they start to walk around and they are in that, uh, welping box, all of a sudden, if they don't have enough room, they start to bump at each other a little bit too much to where. You, you start to see the tension and they actually really start to become a little bit aggressive towards each other simply because there is not enough room. And throughout the years, I've kind of learned to, to really pay attention. And, and there is certain times where you just keep expanding their space and they live very peacefully because of the reason that there is space and they can choose to, to walk away, which is so important. But nevertheless, there, there must be, even with the wolf, just like with the dogs, there can be some brief altercations to where it's like, Hey, back to your place. You, you, you're not here yet. Um, instead of just, just a pasture, right? There can be some.

Well, with the, with the wolf pups, wolf pups, you know, in the wild, there is con there is constant competition. And there are times when one pup might seem to be dominant. And then before you know it, a different one is dominant. Um, and of course they have enough room, like you say. So, so they don't, while they're in that situation, they don't form a dominance hierarchy. It's just that they keep battling each other. And this is probably practice just, uh, you know, to, to, um, assert themselves, which is with wolves is very good to be aggressive and competitive. And they do that, but they are still subordinate to the adults and even subordinate to their older siblings. Like there's usually one year old or two year old, uh, wolves with them. Yeah. And those older wolves are dominant to those pups themselves. And that isn't, that is not disputed. In other words, that's kind of a given. And those, that hierarchy, you, you know, it stays pretty much that way. Yes. So, so one of the things like almost everywhere that when you, especially at the moment, if, if somebody goes on YouTube or watches some of the animal channels on TV. And, and, and we go into watching a, a, a wolf show. There is still this thing about, uh, um, that notion still somehow is trying to say that, okay, well, they are very, uh, um, wolves are. They are, in a way they live in this peaceful harmony, not because of the hierarchy and because of the, the, the, the dominance, but just because they are somehow have found a, a, a better way than done. And we understood before, uh, which in my opinion, again, it's a fallacy. Um, um, it, it's like a, just this fairy tale of, they cannot be like really every social animal on our planet. The only way there is harmony is when there is a very stable understanding of who belongs where within that social society. Otherwise it becomes very problematic. Right. Um, and, and the other, the other one, Dave, is the, how do wolves compare to dogs? There is always like, like, like, let me ask you in, in a different way. I know you, you are, uh, the expert of wolves, but you have had some interactions with dogs throughout your life for sure. What, how much, like if you didn't know dogs at all, but you see few dogs interacting with each other. How much do you see and how much can you tell about the dogs from your experience with the wolves? Well, that is a problem actually, more than you'd think. Because with, with dogs, okay, or let's start back with wolves.

Um, with, with wolves, the interactions that most biologists who study wolves see are the interactions within the pack itself. And they're related. And that hierarchy, as you said, that's established. So that's one thing. Now, when you see dogs interacting, the, the usual thing that I see is, um, someone with a dog on a leash walking down the street. And then somebody else with a different dog comes down. If that were wolves, they would be fighting. That doesn't happen with wolves. Right. What happens when one sees the other, unless they're in the position to mate, you know, if they're looking for a mate. But other than that, if, if one pack of wolves, say, comes upon another pack, well, there's a fight. Or one pack chases the other, usually. Right. So, so that's where it differs in the dogs. They, they don't just automatically try to kill each other. Sometimes they do fight. I've seen that, of course, you know. I guess I wasn't going too much about the, not so much about the, the, the, but this is a interesting, very, very interesting and important part. But I was thinking more of, like, the way dogs, just, just how they communicate with each other. If not necessarily when, like, you know, they sniff each other. Wow. They do put their head on top of the other one. They do, like, in, in my opinion, there is abundance of similarities of how they interact in between each other using the same body language. Yes. For the same reasons. Yes. Yes. On an individual basis, the problem comes in the context for the whole thing. Because the context is different when dogs meet up with each other. But they do go through the similar ways of sniffing each other and body language and all that is similar to what it is with wolves. It's just that because of this difference that I just described, interpreting what's going on is not necessarily, is very difficult, would be very difficult for me, for example, thinking about wolves to interpret what's going on with the dogs. I would not know how to interpret that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because, because of this difference, you see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In other words, they're saying, they're using the same language, but they might be, they probably are saying different things. Yes. This will be when, I guess, once the dogs are, I mean, they're clearly in a very different position. They don't have space. They are put in a family. They're depending on what age. They're also going to matter. How they will accept and how they also, depending on what the rules in the house are. Yeah.

If it's more chaotic, just like with kids, there's going to be guaranteed some, some not so good outcomes eventually. I guess I, I guess I, I, I spent, like I grew up in, in Bulgaria, in way back before in the communist times. And I used to spend a lot of times with the stray dogs. And they also lived very much in the same, very much the same concept, really, to where it's like there is the family here. And these are the few blocks that are their blocks. And all of a sudden, a loner tries to come in. And, and this is a very bad idea for that dog. It doesn't matter how big that, you know, when you get outnumbered and, and it really matters to you because this is your home. Yes. Yes. Then, then we have problems. And so, so I was, I guess, talking more about this situations where, you know, more of a free reign, free roaming kind of stray dogs or whatever we want to call them and wolves. And also, if we have the, the male and a female with their puppies, which I have often, I find that, you know, it's just beautiful to watch how they are born. And they're learning and it's almost, it's almost a big question in my head. Do they really learn it from experience or how much genetically this comes to where they come ready to be subordinate to begin with at birth? And then as they're growing up, they start to grow up also mentally and sexually mature. And then they start to be like, okay, I, I, I am growing now. But as, as, as a really young ones, we never see a puppy dog to try to be aggressively biting mom so she can throw up food. I'm sure that's clearly a different program genetically mechanism to stimulate her in a very different way instead of stomping their foot and demanding with aggression to get food. So they are already at birth programmed to be subordinate for, for, for quite a bit of time. And, and, and it's almost the same with, with every, every social creature. Um, but there are times when two puppies can get into a little scruffle and it's not necessarily even that one now has the upper hand and that's lasting. It's just a moment of, it's just a moment of, in time, but there is this little, yes, all the time. And, and they're gaining a lot of experience from that. Um, when, when, um, like what the wolves before they,

so like let, let's say two pucks, two families. Um, I, I, I am almost always confused what to call them, families, pucks, parents, like it's just becoming very difficult, but let's say two, two families. And the one outnumbers the other, and maybe the other couple are a little bit older, uh, uh, so, so they're clearly going to lose. Has there been a time when they would get in this, like the, the, the stronger family tries to push them away from, so they can gain territory. But has it, does it happen often to where the female from the one family gets to stay with the new family? You, you know what I'm saying? Yes, I do. That's pretty rare. Okay. Yes. Um, I mean, ordinarily, uh, that wouldn't happen. Um, if the pack is broken up because some are killed, then that could happen. But, um, it wouldn't happen like when they meet. Right. When they meet is a battle. Yes. It's a chase. Yeah. And we, we have a paper on, on these battles. I don't know if you know that paper. Yes. I, I think. I can send it to you. No, no, I, I, I've read that one. Okay. And, I mean, the interesting part is that then the, the little, the younger ones later on, they may end up joining or one of them may end up joining. But certainly doesn't happen during that confrontation of time. Right. Right. Yeah. What, how much do you know about the, like, you know, how they keep talking about this super packs in, in Russia, in Siberia. Yeah. Does that happen in, in the States or in Canada or anywhere else in the world? And what, what is your thoughts on this? Because we're talking like 400. Yeah. I don't, I don't believe it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I don't believe it. I don't know how that would be. We don't have that. I mean, you know, when you see a lot of wolves together, it looks like more than there are. But the biggest pack I have ever seen, and that I know of really, is 37. I do know that from Yellowstone Park. I've seen that. And there is another record of a 42. And I know how that happens. But beyond that, no, I just don't believe, I believe that some journalist exaggeration or some rumor, not good evidence. Yeah. That was, I guess I'm gonna have to go back and watch those videos again, because there is quite a few videos and they show a lot of, I mean, like a huge number of them. But who knows, today, you never know what you see on on video. Oh, that is for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then there was this one. So, okay, that's very interesting, because again, this kind of gaining some popularity and it's all over. Well, not at the moment, but I think it was 2015 or 14, something back then.

And there were, I think, a bunch of kids got killed by the wolves in somewhere in Siberia, and they were going to hunt them down. And then there is this other kind of legend, like, probably also very questionable, where the, at the World War One, the Germans and the Russians stopped fighting because they've been being attacked constantly and eaten by, outnumbered basically by wolves. So they, the story goes that they teamed up, stop fighting so they can resolve that problem with the wolves and then continue to fight. And then, but again, that's, yeah, there is no real grounds on that, I guess. Right. Right. It really wouldn't make much sense to like, it's an interesting idea because super pack, but, but to, to be able to communicate, this is probably where humans, we, we can, we can converse and we can instruct each other. We can, we can make that big of a society. And, and I mean, that's why we have the village and the tribalism, I guess, in, in humans and countries and so on. But wolves would be very hard to, to come to that kind of agreement on that big of a scale. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I think, and I don't know, I don't pretend to know a lot about humans, but what I think I do know is that those societies really didn't start until, until we had agriculture where there was some domestication and they were able to, you know, to, to, to grow enough food for a lot of people. When you're out hunting all the time, you know, then you're competing with, with other, other groups or tribes or families or whatever. And you can't get too big because you are always competing. But if you grow your own crops or even your own herds of your own domestic animals, you, you can build your numbers too, you know. True. Yeah. And another. We have a few more minutes. So I. Yes. Yeah. Another, one of the kind of interesting questions that lingers in my mind always in, in, in, uh, uh, now the, the word came out, not Yosemite, the, um, Yellowstone. Yellowstone. Yeah. When, when it was 95, I remember it because I, it was so interesting when this was happening and was all over. And it was very easy to, to pay attention to. There was that question and concern about the deer at the time that they have for generations now, not being chased and killed by wolves. So how would they respond? Did they, were they really oblivious or was the genetics there and they knew that, uh, wolves are, uh, you know, uh, instinctually, Oh, oh, you mean. You mean. Yes. You mean. Because they hadn't been wolves there for so long. Oh. Yeah. But they were being preyed on by coyotes, which are small wolves.

Uh, they were being preyed on by coyotes and bears and cougars all the time, even if wolves weren't there. Um, so. Okay. They understood predators and wolf was just one more, you know. Okay. Okay. Um, so now with the, with the, how do you think the wolves, if, if humans were not so like, like the, of course there is like, especially now it's quite divided. There is people that all really love them and there's people that still very, very, very, very about them. about them but if if we were a little bit more as a whole moderate do you think that wolves will end up coming closer and and being more of a scavenger kind of like how the dogs find the easy way and eventually oh they do that already when people are yes and it it becomes problems for some villages and things we'll tend to do that there's one wolf right now um that's making news where is it um i think it's in oh uh china china um in china there's a wolf that's getting fed along the highway and it's in the news a lot and the people are people like it because they can feed it but then the authorities are saying no you shouldn't do this and and um so that happens and um it happens other places it happens in minnesota and but usually what happens is you know uh the wolf gets hit by a car or something somebody shoots them or something and so it doesn't last very long you know but but if people were um took more care yes they would get they would tend to get some of them would tend to get tamer and hang around people yeah okay the last one what do you think of like how different because like we have so many different types of wolves are all over the globe do they breathe in between yes yes yes there's only science only recognizes the gray wolf canis lupus which is circumpolar so that's all over europe and asia and north america they can interbreed some are small like the little ones in in israel they may be only um it might be 15 kilograms uh but way up um in central canada some of those would be uh 50 kilograms yes yeah and um but but they all can interbreed yes now there are some animals that are called wolves that are not with the common name that are not wolves mained wolf in um in south america the mained wolf it's not a wolf it's in the dog family but it's not um in the genus of wolves and even the ethiopian wolf is not really a wolf um there's also one in north america called the red wolf and science says that's a little different um so we recognize it as canis rufus rather than canis lupus but other than that there's sub species of wolves sub species but um they all interbreed and and people

just science disagrees on which are the subspecies in north america originally until 1993 science recognized 24 subspecies in north america originally now in 1993 they lump them all into five so that give you an idea it's it's very with subspecies it's very subjective yeah did you ever have this desire desire to help some of them help meaning i mean i'm sure you with this vast time that you have spent you you have seen at all you have seen them fighting with bears and protecting food and food being taken from them and getting injured and how like have you ever had a this desire to to see a wolf that you you knew when you see it that it needs help but would you help would you let nature take care of its course with my job i have to just let nature help uh take it take its course yeah yeah that's interesting i have i have had situations where one of my radio collared wolves was was caught in somebody's illegal trap and i took it out of the trap and put it in a pen and fed it and turned it loose again but it was a radioed wolf i was studying i've done that but otherwise if i just found a a wolf you know it would would not be my position to to try to save it somehow right right right well they've uh really appreciate are you going to do anything with this at all uh what do you mean with the podcast are you going to have a program with this at all or anything yes yes yes we will would you when uh when we are done what we'll do is we can um uh when we edit it and then we can send it to you or oh okay yeah that would be good okay and you know if if you have questions during that process feel free to email me yeah no i will always try to answer you thank you so much we were so much grounded i mean the the most important one is dominance it's it's ridiculous to to try to pretend that it's kind of like saying that the earth is flat at this point yeah yeah right you know please and and then the super parts that was very important for me like right like some very very interesting one so thank you so much and uh um i'll be in touch with the questions thank you day

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