The power of the pack

Earlier today our dog Alfi was out with me on a walk in a large open-ish space of common land near where we live. Part of the way into the walk, along a path, I saw a small pack of small spaniels, two on a lead and one free-roaming accompanied by a young lady. I had seen these dogs before: when they were younger there were about 6 of them and Alfi had encountered them before: they had used their numbers to intimidate Alfi on that occasion and this time, poor thing, he sat down, trembling, facing away from these spaniels. Clearly his previous encounter had been etched into his memory. In actual fact these dogs, this time, seemed quite friendly and willing to be friendly, unfortunately Alfi didn't read it that way. These little dogs scared him out of his wits. The dog walker arranged to take her dogs on a little way so that I could call Alfi to go past them without getting too clase, which he did.

But it got me thinking about the power of the pack: where an individual is a different proposition to a mob or group working to some degree together. It puts me in mind of a passage early in The Eternal Child where the author imagines early humans terrorising the neighbourhood simply because they were able to work together: as single creatures we would have been leapard meat, as a pack something to strike terror into other critters.
Pack (canine) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia