TGIF

Whitney Cummings, comedienne, discusses her experience "hanging out with wolves":

Each wolf was doing something different. One was digging, one was pacing, one was howling, one was eating, one was grooming itself, one was sleeping, one was hiding, one was hanging out in its den, one was digging on top of its den and one was intently and seemingly menacingly staring at us.

Cate Salansky, our wolf expert and guide, asked me, “Which one do you think is the alpha?”

Duh, I thought. This woman really took me for an idiot. “The one who’s howling,” I said. “That’s obviously the leader.”

“Nope.”

All right, I thought, then it must be the one that is eating.

Wrong again.

I went on to guess every wolf except the alpha. Turns out, the alpha wolf can usually be found sleeping. Sleeping. Didn’t it need to bark and growl and intimidate people to show everyone that it was the alpha? No; overcompensating is more of a people thing. Ages ago, I read somewhere, probably in a self-help book I bought after a nasty breakup, that truly powerful beings don’t need to prove how powerful they are. This made no sense to me until I saw it in action with the wolves. When you’re truly in control, you don’t need to tap on people’s shoulders constantly to remind them how in control you are.