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In December 2015, a photograph of a wolf pack marching through the snow began circulating via Facebook along with an inaccurate description about its hierarchy: Despite the image's popularity, however, the attached description of the inner workings of a wolf pack are inaccurate. The photograph shown was taken by Chadden Hunter and featured in the BBC documentary Frozen Planet in 2011, with its original description explaining that the alpha female led the pack and that the rest of the wolves followed in her tracks in order to save energy: While this description is more accurate than the one shared in the viral Facebook post, some researchers would nonetheless dispute the use of the term alpha. In David Mech's 1999 paper Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs, he argued that the concept of an alpha wolf who asserts his or her dominance over other pack members doesn't actually exist in the wild: This photograph is real in the sense that it shows a pack of wolves in Wood Buffalo National Park, but the pack is not being led by the three oldest members and trailed by an alpha wolf, as implied by a viral Facebook post. Instead, one of the stronger animals leads the group in order to create a path through the snow for them.
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