Honor wrote:Please note that I'm refraining from naming you Captain Obvious on the assumption that you meant something other than the... well... obvious here.
You are keeping things vague so I'm having to fill in the blanks with things like "domestication." Apparently that was an incorrect assumption, but more on that later.
Honor wrote:You've not spent a lot of time with sheep, have you?
Actually, I have, have you? I have also spent a sizable amount of time with goats, cattle, and horses and have read/watched some on their social dynamics. Wild sheep would very much follow the alpha ram, who had a tendency to lead the herd in whatever direction seemed like a good idea. He would lead, and the rest would follow him to the next pasture. He would also help defend the herd against external threats (to an extent), he was a "very real leader." Same with horses, very much the same with longhorn cattle (who are as close to wild that humans still deal with). These herd animals will give the alpha a wide berth, they will challenge and/or retreat over eating rights, the big difference is that they move a lot slower because unlike meat their prey does not run away of provide a lot of energy in a small package.
Honor wrote:Wolves follow their pack leadership in a very real sense... Wild analogs to modern domesticated sheep "follow" their herd alpha in a very general "hey, I'm too far away from the group." sense.
Again, not really. An alpha chooses which prey to chase and the rest of the pack follows out of a sense, "the pack is moving, I don't want to be left behind."
You're still being rather vague, so I'll attempt to fill in the blanks. Pack animals eat together, play together, sleep together, hunt together, and fight together. So do herd animals. Herd animals' eating covers more area because grass has a much lower energy density than a single deer carcass. Their playing together has less time because you have to spend way more time eating grass than you do eating meat. Herd animals sleep together, um, no difference there. Their "hunting" keeps them all in the same grassy field, even/especially if the one who leads heads to another field and they all follow. Finally, a herd fights together, but only as far as they *can* fight. Herd animals are prey and prey always has to *lose* to predators to keep nature in the balance. A lone predator will cause them to retreat, but eventually catch a hoof in the brains, a pack will cause them to retreat and then take down a weak and sick one before the herd has time to come around and group up again.
There really are no significant differences, the ones you seem to be focusing boil down to what they eat. A wolf pack will work together on one kill because all of them are necessary for that one kill and one kill is enough to feed them. A herd doesn't have that "eye on the prize" goal-orientation because their prey is grass and they have to cover a lot of territory to get their number fed. But to mistake their "slower lifestyle" for "leaderless disorganization" is incorrect.
Honor wrote:More or less "dominant" members of a larger herd enjoy and enforce their status only when mating is at direct issue...
No they don't. When the human tosses out the tasty treats the alpha female cow invariably enforces her status as alpha and gets the largest clump of range cubes. I see it all the time with the cattle at home. I have seen it with the sheep too.
Honor wrote:You know what you have to do to join a herd? Show up. And to join a pack? Prove yourself... Both as an asset, and in the negative, as not being a threat...
See above discussion about "hunting". For a herd, showing up *is* an asset and if you manage to prove yourself troublesome or a threat, you get kicked out just as readily as in the wolf pack. When resources are tight and grazing is poor the herd kicks out the weaker and sicker. Conversely when the pack has fat times they support even the poorest performers until such time as the Omega wolf proves a threat to the pack or the hunting is bad. A threat to the pack will get on killed, being too expensive to maintain will get you exiled.
Honor wrote:Herd structure works because herd animals feel secure among their own kind... There need not be kindness, approval, reinforcement, or social interaction beyond standing nearby and grazing... just society.
Pack structure works because pack animals will do anything for approval... membership... positive reinforcement and evidence that they belong. The much decried slow death of the terrible aloneness and anonymity of modern city life is evidence of this... For a pack animal, simply being surrounded by similar others isn't enough... We need connection. Approval. Membership.
All of those things do exist in a herd hierarchy. They just don't exert themselves as strongly because a herd has a lot less time to waste on such frivolity as "play" when they have so much grass eating and re-eating to do. Just because acceptance into the group does not involve elaborate licking and sniffing and wrestling rituals (wait am I talking about humans or wolves there?) does not mean they are not present or important. They are just less wasteful of time and energy that a herd doesn't have.
Again, a question of prey.
Honor wrote:That's why dogs make perfect partners for humans... Canis Lupus is possibly the only animal in nature that is even more a pack animal than we are. Train a dog, and you'll see a human being writ large... An intelligent creature who wants nothing in this world more than the approval of it's alpha.
Hmm, what about horses? No longer necessary in the age of cars but a horse was a better friend than a dog in plenty of tales ye olde since the horse was more likely to be useful.
Honor wrote:That's why religion works, that's why armies work, that's why "secret societies" work, that's why extended families work. The fear of expulsion form the group trumps all other concerns.
Herd animals would fear expulsion from the group, too... If anyone was ever expelled... As it is, all they have to fear is getting lost.
Herds very much do expel. The weak are left behind to be eaten, both to appease the hungry predators out in the darkness and to keep their tainted genetics out of the pool. The young bucks are expelled, driven out to let the alpha keep his mating rights. There is a reason religion is referred to as a "herd-like mentality." All you have to do to "be a productive member" of the faith is show up and pray and not threaten the faithful's bubble. But if it seems like your existence somehow threatens the faith or an attacker needs a pound of flesh, sacrificing one of the number to let the others continue is just a stone's throw away.
Once again, your entire focus seems to be on a herd being slow, stupid, and fat while a pack is lean, mean, and efficient. Staying efficient means sharp and overt social dynamics rather than slow and moody social slothings. But it boils down to the difference between predator and prey, and otherwise being pretty much the same.
