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"Alpha male" redirects here. For the professional wrestler see Monty Brown.
"Beta male" redirects here. For the Times newspaper column see Beta Male.


In social animals, the alpha male or alpha female is the individual in the community whom the others follow and defer to. Where one male and one female fulfill this role, they are referred to as the alpha pair. In some groups, the alpha males and females are overrepresented in the genetics of a population if they are the only ones who breed successfully.

Chimpanzees show deference to the alpha of the community by ritualised gestures such as bowing, allowing the alpha to walk first in a procession, or standing aside when the alpha challenges. Canines also show deference to the alpha pair in their pack, by allowing them to be the first to eat and, usually, the only pair to mate; wolves are a good example of this. The status of the alpha is generally achieved by means of superior physical prowess; however, in certain highly social species such as the bonobo and humans, a contender can use more indirect methods, such as political alliances, to oust the ruling alpha and take his/her place.

In humans, the expression refers to a man who is powerful or high on the social ladder, similar to hegemonic masculinity. In Western cultures, the term is usually pejorative and describes a man who is overtly or affectedly masculine to the point of rejecting any affront to his ascribed status.

Beta male and omega male

In the power hierarchy of the animal group, two other roles also are defined and named. First, the beta male, which is the contender, subservient to the alpha male, but only after testing. The betas act as second-in-command and can either be dethroned alpha males or future alphas if they persist in challenging the regnant alpha male. The term omega male (-male) is an antonym often used in a deprecating or self-deprecating manner to refer to males at the bottom of the social hierarchy. An omega male will be subservient to both the alpha and the beta males.

See also

External links


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Beta Male is a column written by The Times journalist Robert Crampton. It appears every Saturday on the back page of The Times magazine supplement.

Column content

Beta Male
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A social animal is a loosely defined term for an organism that is highly interactive with other members of its species to the point of having a recognizable and distinct society.
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Panina

Genus: Pan
Oken, 1816

Type species
Simia troglodytes
Blumenbach, 1775

distribution of Pan spp.

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Canidae
G. Fischer de Waldheim, 1817

Genera
  • Alopex
  • Atelocynus
  • Canis
  • Cerdocyon
  • Chrysocyon
  • Cuon
  • Cynotherium †
  • Dusicyon †
  • Dasycyon

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C. lupus

Binomial name
Canis lupus
Linnaeus, 1758

Range map. Green, present; red, former.

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P. paniscus

Binomial name
Pan paniscus
Schwarz, 1929

Bonobo distribution


The Bonobo (Pan paniscus), until recently usually called the
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Antonyms, from the Greek anti ("opposite") and onoma ("name") are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as hot and cold, obese and skinny, and up and down.
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Brave New World

First edition cover
Author Aldous Huxley
Cover artist Leslie Holland
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Dystopian novel
Publisher Chatto and Windus (London)
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Chillingham (Wild) Cattle is the name of a herd of wild bovids at Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, England; this rare herd of 62 animals (as of the year 2006) inhabits a very large woodland that has existed since the Middle Ages, although there were fewer animals after World
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