Are alpha males real?

​​The concept of the alpha male was first suggested in 1970 to explain the organization of wolves in a pack. But wildlife research biologist David Mech, who coined the term, never intended for "alpha male" to mean the sole leader of a pack. Instead, he described how an "alpha male" and "alpha female" pair rule their group, make the decisions and produce offspring.

This idea quickly spread to other social animals and was even absorbed into popular culture, where it has come to describe a confident, assertive and often abrasive personality.

But over 20 years after publishing his seminal alpha male theory, Mech argued that subsequent observations showed wild wolf packs were simply family groups, with the alpha pair just the parents. In a video, he acknowledged that the "term implies that the wolves fought and competed strongly to get to the top of the pack. In actuality, the way they get there is merely by mating with a member of the opposite sex, producing a bunch of offspring, which are the rest of the pack then — and becoming the natural leaders that way."

Recent studies have also challenged this idea of alphas in other animal species. Females exclusively dominate in many animal groups, including hyenas, orcas and meerkats. Either sex may rule primate groups. And some species, such as African lions, form coalitions, with each individual sharing equal status.

So is the concept of alpha relevant or even real? Behavioral ecology suggests it is, although perhaps not exactly the way we thought.

The majority of gregarious (group) animals do adopt some form of social hierarchy. This internal structure defines each individual's access to different resources, such as food, mates and territory, thus helping the group deal with disputes and sometimes avoid conflict altogether.

Related: Do animals have friends?

"Alpha just means that that animal, at a certain moment or for a certain interval of time, is the top of the ranking," Paulo Mota, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Porto in Portugal, told Live Science.

The nature and complexity of these rankings can vary dramatically among species. Chickens have an extremely linear hierarchy — a single alpha female reigns supreme, but every other hen has a clearly defined position in the ranking. Others, like the naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber), have one dominant pair — an alpha male and alpha female that breed and control the colony while all other group members are approximately equal.

However, "in social species with complex brains, the pattern of social relationships becomes more complex, more diffuse, and not direct," Mota said. Primate species often have looser structures, with multiple hierarchies spanning different facets of group life.

"Most of the time, these dominance hierarchies are based on fighting and linked to power, so around priority of access to resources," explained Dieter Lukas, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "But there are other aspects of power: the idea of leadership — for example, who determines where the group goes today or whether to fight against a neighboring group — and these aren't necessarily linked to the same hierarchies."

To add to this mixed picture, these group rankings aren't even permanent social positions. Alpha status is more like a temporary job role than an innate characteristic of the leading individual. "In most species, ranks can change frequently and quite quickly, especially in situations where high-ranking individuals get higher benefits," Lukas told Live Science. "If you look across the whole lives of individuals, each individual might have been an alpha at one point in their life."

Likewise, humans seen as alpha males may dominate in social situations, but they might not be the person who would win in a fistfight, or the person you would elect as a leader. "Most of what we talk about in animals is power, but we know there's also prestige," Lukas said. "This status is something where you have these different roles in the society and I think humans are really characterized by this huge flexibility."

But he added, if we look closely, we can also see this same flexibility across different animal populations.

So where does this leave the concept of the alpha male?

Some animal social groups are clearly dominated by a single male individual, and in certain species, it's even possible to identify physiological changes associated with this elevation in status, Mota said. "In mice, the testes will grow bigger and the animal will start to produce more testosterone. It will start urinating all around instead of in one place in order to mark the territory. These changes occur after the animal changes its dominance position."

However, Lukas argues that the term "alpha male" is overly simplistic and ignores the nuances of social behavior and structure in more intelligent species. "This concept about the alpha as the one with absolute power in the group is really not helpful because it obscures the fact that even if a male wins all the fights, he might not be the one making decisions. The power distribution isn't that simple," he said.