The Short Version
The historical record strongly supports this claim. The alpha male dominance concept in wolves traces directly to Rudolf Schenkel's 1947 study of captive wolves at Basel Zoo, not to observations of wild packs. David Mech, who popularized the concept in his 1970 book, later acknowledged this origin and actively sought to correct the record after his own field studies of wild wolves revealed that natural packs function as family units rather than dominance hierarchies.