What prevents carnivore pack animals from eating each other?

If they ate each other, the breed would die out and they wouldn’t be here today.

Maybe in the past, some have eaten each other, and those are no longer.

Absolutely nothing. I don’t know about lions, but wolves will eat one of the pack if it is sick or injured. That does two things: it feeds the rest of the pack and it avoids having to feed an extra mouth that doesn’t contribute to the welfare of the pack. This would be especially true if times were tough for the pack.

They need each other. You eat your helpers.

In a pack, as long as there is a stable food source, no member is without value.
The weaker animals, would more likely starve from being unable to fight for enough meat to live. As long as they can move, they’ll try to contribute, and earn sustenance, and a home.
Wolves, literally have like a ranking system. The Alpha leads, eats first, and gets the bitches (female dogs;) as long as he can beat any challengers.
Then, it goes B,C,D, etc. The lower ranking wolves, may change rank amongst each other but likely will never challenge the Alpha.

But it IS, a “dog, eat dog world.”

“February 28, 2023

Is the Alpha Wolf Idea a Myth?

The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator, or alpha wolf, comes from old studies of captive wolves. In the wild, wolf packs are simply families

If you’ve ever heard the term “alpha wolf,” you might imagine snapping fangs and fights to the death for dominance. The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator is pervasive, lending itself to a shorthand for a kind of dominant masculinity.

But it turns out that this is a myth, and in recent years wildlife biologists have largely dropped the term “alpha.” In the wild, researchers have found that most wolf packs are simply families, led by a breeding pair, and bloody duels for supremacy are rare.

“What would be the value of calling a human father the alpha male?” says L. David Mech, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied wolf packs in the wild for decades. “He’s just the father of the family. And that’s exactly the way it is with wolves.””

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-alpha-wolf-idea-a-myth/

Carnivore’s will eat others of their same. Certainly will to protect their own territory or if if they find one already dead.

Same reason we humans don’t eat each other.

Wrong premise. A better question is when and why they do.

@Dutchess_III We don’t do it essentially for moral reasons; I don’t think animals have the same reasoning.

Carnivores that are pack animals and are wired through evolutiob not to hurt members of their extended families,