Thinking Like a Wolf: Lessons from the Yellowstone Packs

The largely successful fifth installment in wolf behaviorist McIntyre’s Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone series (after The Alpha Female Wolf) provides a panoramic portrait of packs, highlighting the four “life strategies” the author has observed in wolves. Noting that “dispersers” strike out on their own to form or join new packs, McIntyre describes how after an alpha male’s mate was killed by hunters, he started a new pack with a partner from a rival group, only for females from his previous pack to kill his new mate. “Rebels” attempt to become alphas by usurping pack leaders, McIntyre reveals, discussing how one wolf took her sister’s place as alpha female by bonding with her sister’s mate and then dominating her sister “when she was still recovering from giving birth.” Elsewhere, McIntyre discusses how “maverick” wolves drift between groups “without much interest in climbing the pack’s social hierarchy,” and how “biders” “accept a subordinate status in life... until an alpha position opens up.” The startling power plays are worthy of Game of Thrones, but the narrative falters the more McIntyre inserts himself into it, largely to recount his wolf-spotting expeditions (“On December 23, I set a personal record. I saw three wolf packs in the Tower Junction area, about six miles west of Slough Creek”). Though not without slow spots, this has enough Shakespearean drama to keep readers turning pages. (Oct.)