Talk:L. David Mech

Wolf-man

Wolf-man redirects here, it should redirect to the same disambiguation as Wolf Man. --illumi 00:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on it! North8000 (talk) 17:47, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Davemech.jpg

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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Expansion

I'm embarking on an expansion of this article. My work will not be all at once and so there will be intermediate stageswhere the organization and arrangement is a bit ragged. For example starting and deveoping new sections and eventual rearrangement and expansion of material with relation to those sections. So it will be a slow motion "work in progress" where the organization will be a bit ragged. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:53, 1 March 2017 (UTC) Ditto. North8000 (talk) 17:45, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

L. David Mech

(copied from my North8000 talk page)

Hi @North8000, I don't appreciate your wholesale revert of my edits on the L. David Mech page. I spent close to an hour proofreading the edits you made, including fixing bare urls and grammatical errors, and you just undid all of it in one click. This is both rude and inappropriate. If you disagree with specific changes I made, please take it up on the talk page instead. Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 00:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

@Revirvlkodlaku: You did a massive bundle of controversial deletions of good informative material material and sourcing. Including deletion of a 10 page article by Chicago's largest newspaper and all of the cites to it and material citing it on giving the rationale that it is "sub par" Please take specific specific controversial proposed deletions to talk. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 04:41, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I reverted the mass controversial deletion and am re-adding the non-controversial edits that were bundled into it. North8000 (talk) 10:56, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I did that. Even on the gnome edits in the bundle IMO you introduced some errors or were the opposite of an improvement. All things considered, from here on out let's just do and handle controversial and likely-controversial edits individually. Or just do them more individually overall. North8000 (talk) 18:33, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Controversy Section

Would anyone else agree that this article needs an expanded section discussing Mech being the origin of the now-debunked "alpha male/wolf" hypothesis given its cultural impact and effects? Phrost (talk) 13:36, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I would definitely and absolutely agree. Mech's request to his original publisher to retract "THE WOLF: ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR OF AN ENDANGERED SPECIES" from print when he had made new observations of wild wolves and realized how misleading the original book could be really ought to be mentioned, even highlighted. I do not know if the "alpha/beta/..." terminology as applied to other species already existed, or if David Mech actually was the first to use those terms at all, but his realization of his error and attempt to start correcting it is an important aspect of his work, and its complete omission really ought not to be left unmentioned. Whether or not he was the first to use the terms at all or not, his use of them in his book has had enormous popular impact which still persists almost 50 years later, and is (I believe) generally an unhelpful and simplistic starting view to bring to all interactions of everything, which is the prevailing public understanding it seems. 97.124.254.71 (talk) 11:39, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good. We need a source to write it from. North8000 (talk) 16:29, 10 August 2025 (UTC)